Service Sellers Masters Course - Attract New Clients - Where To Find Clients by John Finn

Service Sellers Masters Course

Introduction Welcome to the Service Sellers Masters Course, a comprehensive, DO-able 10-DAY program of building income through content... content that attracts targeted potential new clients, firmly establishes your credibility, inspires trust and gets that all important first phone call or response to your contact form from a prospective client who wants to learn more about your service and to hire you for the job. You will emerge from this 10-DAY program with a radically stronger information base and skill set -- well on your way towards building a substantial service business, either totally from scratch or by increasing your current client list. Each of the 10 DAYS has a specific “Goal-of-the-DAY,” a clear, do-able, target. Complete this goal before moving ahead to the next DAY. By the time you finish DAY 10’s Goal-of-the-DAY, you will have a Theme-Based Content Site up and running and generating traffic and income. Each DAY also sets an “Ongoing Goal.” Why? Because a Web site is never “finished.” The Ongoing Goal is what you should be achieving on a regular basis. The Ongoing Goals provide the pathway for building maximal income through content over the following weeks and months. Bottom line?... Upon completion of the course, an income-generating process will be clearly established. Call it your 10-DAY program to building income through content! The Service Sellers Masters Course is a “work-at-your-own-pace” course. Some of you will be able to devote large blocks of time to it. So you’ll complete a “DAY” in one (or even fewer) of your days. Others may only have 15-30 minutes per day to spend on it. So it could take you a week or more to complete a “DAY” of the course. Either way, it does not matter how long it takes you to complete the course --remember the story of the tortoise and the hare. Set aside a certain amount of time per day to attend this course and to do your homework. You’ll find it was time well, no best, spent.

The Service Sellers Masters Course is designed and written for all service sellers, including those who are... • new to the Net -- you may already have an established offline service business and now want to complement this base with an online presence. Or you may be 2

Service Sellers Masters Course

just starting a new service and want to use the Net's powerful reach and quick access to your best advantage. • experienced -- you want to build a second theme-based site that will reinforce your credibility and attract more targeted traffic to your main Web site. • in the “just-thinking-about-starting-a-business” stage of development -- you have this idea about a possible service business and you are looking for the information and tools to bring it to fruition in an uncomplicated but effective way. It doesn't matter who you are or what you do... Everyone shares the same goal... to maximize profits. Be forewarned about the Service Sellers Masters Course, though... The material that we will be covering will be extensive in scope. It will require effort and commitment on your part, as does anything important that yields rewards. Most folks have to train or go to university for years to prepare to earn a substantial income stream. Your mini-university course will accomplish this by the end of this e-book. Don’t let me scare you, though... All of it is manageable. Take your time to digest the information properly before you start to work on the prescribed action steps towards your goals. Use the Goals-of-the-DAY and Ongoing Goals as your guide-posts, your beacons of light. Understanding the concepts will boost your confidence level in applying them. Even as adults, we never lose our need to know “why” things work the way they do. It’s critical that you finish each DAY of this course before you begin the next. The DAYS build on each other. You are following a step-by-step process. As I said, though, please don’t feel that you have to rush -- work at your own pace, as time allows. Set your own work schedule... and stick to it. Take as much time as you need to complete the 10-DAY program. Set a realistic schedule that will allow you to do your best. Do you have only 30 minutes daily to work on the course? No problem. Your Service Sellers Master’s “DAY” is done when it’s done, even if it takes you a week! This is not a race. Final piece of advice...

Service Sellers Masters Course

Use your printer to make a hard copy (your own textbook!). There is just too much information in the Service Sellers Masters Course to learn by reading off a monitor screen. Here’s a super little printing utility that will allow you to print 2 or 4 pages to a single 8.5” x 11” piece of paper. It saves you paper, space, and money... http://www.fineprint.com/ Underline the important parts of the course. Add your own notes and ideas. I promise you... you’ll get lots and lots of great inspiration as you go along. Please... work with a printed version of this course. If you are at all serious about following this course to build a serious income stream, please start right... print it. Build your service-selling business by following a process that works… a process based upon the fundamental reality of how people use the Net. People search for information and solutions so success begins with quality, relevant content. Start where your visitors start and then everything else falls into place… CONTENT

TRAFFIC

PRESELL

MONETIZE

This is key to success on the Net. The money comes only after you’ve taken care of the content, traffic and PREselling. The Service Sellers Master Course takes you through each step, but for those who want a quick look at the big picture, go to… http://ctpm.sitesell.com/ The process, central to successful Web businesses, including your service business, boils down to these essential steps… STEP 1) Consider your service business from your client’s point of view. What niche do you occupy? What problems do you solve? Develop the best Site Concept/Theme that is right for you. STEP 2) Brainstorm profitable topics that are related to your theme. STEP 3) Build your Theme-Based Content Site -- fill it by publishing high-value content and information that potential clients want. C STEP 4) The theme-based content attracts targeted visitors (i.e., potential clients) because you have written it to rank highly at the engines, in a “no-tricks way” that the Search Engines love... an ethical, effective way to attract targeted clients to your site. Motivated, interested traffic builds. T 4

Service Sellers Masters Course

STEP 5) Your high-value, original content PREsells your targeted visitors, winning confidence and trust by providing the information they seek, by establishing yourself in this niche. It credentializes you in the eyes of your potential new clients. And your blog and e-zine (electronic newsletter) that you publish regularly deepen the relationship, building additional trust. P Trust is critical. Think about it… before you hire someone to perform a service, whether it’s to cut your grass for the summer or file your next tax return, you need a certain comfort level (trust, confidence, competence, etc.). Your visitors are no different. A prospective client will have to feel very confident before she hires your services, especially if you are half-way across the globe! STEP 6) All your good efforts are rewarded... new clients are added! You receive increased loyalty from existing ones. And, if you like, your business generates additional income streams through other monetization models appropriate to your business. Diversification is the key to online business stability. M The Service Sellers Masters Course will get you off and running in the right direction… CONTENT

TRAFFIC

PRESELL

MONETIZE

You can “do it yourself” or you can use the Site Build It! comprehensive system of tools to execute the process in a tenth of the time at a tenth of the cost. A blog doesn’t build a business… http://blogorbuild.sitesell.com/ Ready to begin? Sound the bell. Class is in session...

Service Sellers Masters Course

1. DAY 1 Intro to Business Basics Being a great service seller is not about selling... It’s about PREselling. Goal-of-the-DAY... This is the only DAY where you have nothing to do except read the material. Actually, that’s wrong... Your Goal-of-the-DAY is to understand, understand deeply, the concepts outlined here, culminating with the concept of PREselling to maximize Conversion Rates. It’s the foundation of building income through content.

1.1

Business Basics… The Pathway to Profit!

Do you know which is the single largest sector of the business world? Services! Care to guess what the single most overlooked business opportunity on the Net happens to be? Services! Selling your services online is a fantastic way to “leverage” your income-building potential -- all at a minimum cost. By services, I don’t necessarily mean Net-related services like programming or Web design (although they can and should be included here). You could be... • • • • • • • • • • • •

a landscape designer a cartoon artist an import/export specialist for Germany an investment specialist in Brazilian bonds an expert in Japanese netsuke an accountant with special knowledge of tax havens a copywriter a trainer (of just about anything!) an editor for medical articles someone who creates indexes for books a pharmaceutical expert a translator (Do you know two languages?)

The possibilities are endless. 6

Service Sellers Masters Course

And your clients could be “local” or “global” in nature. The narrowness of your “niche” service will determine whether your target group lives in the neighborhood or much further away -- on another continent, even! The diversity of this world, including its people, is amazing. Just about everyone has an expertise in something that he could sell. Heck, odds are he is already selling it as his primary income source... but he’s never thought seriously about generating customers by using the Web’s full potential. Dubious? Don’t think this happens? Well, consider this... I found our current FileMaker Database programmer on the Web, but have never met him in person. He happens to live in Australia. Over the past few years, this Service Seller has made thousands of dollars through contract work with SiteSell. This brings up the concept of the high lifetime value of every new client... one of the reasons that the Web has such a high Return on Investment (ROI). But more on this a bit below, I’m getting ahead of myself!

Back to our FileMaker programmer... How much of that income would he have earned if I hadn’t found him through the Internet? That’s correct -- zero. OK, now for a “local” example... in my former community (Hudson, Quebec), our Royal Canadian Legion Curling Club hosted a huge bonspiel for the top Legion men’s teams from across Canada. They wanted a bag-piper for the opening ceremony but none of the members knew anyone who played the instrument. So someone tried looking on the Net. Bingo! But here’s the best part. This bag-piper lived in the neighboring community -just 10 miles (15 km) down the road! This is a perfect example of a local service seller using the reach of the Web to generate more income. As you’ll see, it’s every bit as easy, perhaps easier, for potential new clients to find and hire you through the Web than for global-type services such as copywriters, programmers, etc. Global or local, here’s a certainty...

Service Sellers Masters Course

Building a Theme-based Content Site that is related to your service is a smart and timely business move, especially now that more and more people are using the Net as their preferred source of information. And that is exactly what the Service Sellers Masters Course will help you build... ... a site that your visitors will love due to its valuable info And... ... a site that Search Engines will love to spider, list and rank! What do most service sellers do online to add new clients to their roster and build a successful online business? Either they... • do the minimum by constructing a one-page resume-style Web site that simply outlines their credentials (“I’m here... call me if you are interested” passive approach that does nothing to answer the important “what’s-in-it-for-me” question for visitors) Or... • put up a “circa 1997” brochure site that no one visits (no submission of properly optimized Web pages to the Search Engines + no attention to off-page Search Engine ranking criteria = no presence on Web searchers’ radar screens) Or... • post their services on any number of online spots, such as Guru.com (a faceless name lost in a crowd of competitors). These strategies simply do not get the job done effectively. Instead, follow this pathway to profit... Start by thinking about how a prospective client goes about hiring a new service seller. It’s critical to get inside her mindset so that you can set up your strategies accordingly... #1 She has to find you. Use effective marketing efforts online and offline to raise your profile. Achieve a good ranking in Search Engine search results (i.e., try to obtain a top 20 position on a search results page), which makes it easy for people to find and visit your

Service Sellers Masters Course

site. By what you write, say, and do, encourage word-of-mouth referral -- create a buzz! Don’t worry about the details right now. We’re talking “big picture” and business basics today. We’ll get into the nitty-gritty, the exact how-to, in the coming DAYS.

#2 She needs to get to know you and trust you. Build credibility by providing high-value content on your Web site. Show prospects that you have their best interests at heart and that you can adapt or customize your service to meet their individual needs. Foster an ongoing relationship through a free e-zine/newsletter that steadily increases their trust levels and cements a view that you are an “authority” in your field. Yes, you will also start your own theme-related e-zine. Delivering great content to subscribers is so important, especially if you want to sell your services online... • It builds trust. • It credentializes you. • It develops a sense of “owing” in your subscribers. #3 She sees that you and your service fulfill a wish or fix a problem. Show your potential clients through the content on your Web site and in your ezine that you can provide the solution that they are seeking. Your service will solve their problems, answer a dream, enrich their lives, and/or improve their businesses. You are the dependable expert that they want and need! Women now represent over 50% of all surfers. And they control approximately 80% of all shopping dollars. To reinforce this in your mind, we’ll use the feminine pronoun to talk about visitors/clients. To keep things simple and even, we’ll use the masculine pronoun when referring to service sellers.

Once you achieve this essential foundation of trust, the remainder of the pathway is open and positive... your prospect picks up the phone to call you or contacts you via a form on your Web site. After a satisfactory exchange where you “close the deal,” she hires you over other competitors. CONTENT

TRAFFIC

PRESELL

MONETIZE

The content on your Web site has helped to convert her from being a prospect to being a client by developing the trust she needed to contact you! A profitable WIN-WIN situation for both of you! 9

Service Sellers Masters Course

From there, the key to long term success is a simple matter of OVERdelivering your services. Do not just “please” your client -- absolutely “delight” her. Turn her into a raving fan and a valuable lifetime customer. A solid base of repeat clients means a solid base of recurring income and no acquisition costs -- the ideal business outcome! Each new customer has a potential worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars over the lifetime of a business relationship with you, depending upon the nature of your service (even tens of thousands, as you saw earlier with our FileMaker programmer). It’s important to recognize this lifetime value when you are deciding on your marketing strategies to attract new clients. You can allocate more resources, knowing that your potential Return on Investment (ROI) is high.

OK. That’s the “30-thousand foot-view” of the pathway to online profit. Now it’s time to examine each stepping stone along that pathway... starting with “Business Basics.” I will only briefly highlight the essential points here because they will all be covered in context and with more depth throughout DAYS 2-10 of the Service Sellers Masters Course. A successful business is a profitable business. Generating profit is a straightforward and very do-able process... Point #1 -- Identify a great niche service and its target group. In order to generate income, enough people must need and/or value your service and feel strongly that they will personally profit from the way you deliver it versus your competitors’ approach. You also need to know whether your marketing efforts should be focused locally or globally (depending upon the narrowness or broadness and the nature of your niche). For example, a general tax accountant may attract traffic only from his local area. The majority of his clients like the peace of mind afforded by being able to drop off important documents to the office or they prefer to discuss delicate financial matters face-to-face. Contrast this with an international tax accountant who specializes in tax shelter investments for the wealthy. His clients could come from anywhere in the world and communication could all be done by e-mail, fax, or courier.

Service Sellers Masters Course

Action Steps 1) Create thumbnail sketches of... Your service -- Write down in point form exactly What, How, Why, and Where you offer (or plan to) your service. Note your range of flexibility -- how and where you can adapt your service to particular needs. Describe your strengths (i.e., the reasons why you are better than the competition) and pinpoint your weaknesses (i.e., what you are planning to improve). Give your outline to a family member or a friend who knows your business to see if you have forgotten anything and/or to check that the presentation is as objective as possible. Your client -- Develop a profile of your ideal client... • Baby boomer? Senior citizen? Teens? • Family? Single? Partners? • Money concerns? Stressed for time? • Trend-setter? Conservative? Do-It-Yourselfer? • City-dweller? Rural home-owner? • Neighborhood? Region? Nation? Continent? • Etc., etc. Make your sketch as comprehensive as you can. If your service has more than one kind of client, do a profile for each major type. As well, ask yourself who should not be your prospect -- this technique is helpful to keep you focused on your ideal client. 2) Now combine the two thumbnail sketches (You, and Your Client). This is your service business! Use this detailed snapshot when developing content for your Web site. It will help you keep focused on your target group and their needs. Doing this is critical for achieving a high Conversion Rate. The snapshot will also help you narrow your niche, if needed. Use it to discover more profitable angles to your service. The ideal is to offer a service that is relatively high in demand with few suppliers (i.e., your competition). Try to adapt or change your present service to meet that goal as closely as feasible.

Service Sellers Masters Course

Point #2 -- Be passionate about what you do. Action Step 1) Love what you are doing. Your enthusiasm and determination will be reflected in your business at all levels of operation. http://ilovesbi.sitesell.com/ It won’t feel like you are working! Point #3 -- Offer superior quality service to your clients. Action Step 1) Provide outstanding service every time. “Wow” your customer with your fast turn-around, or low pricing, or free trial, or unexpected extras, or generous guarantee, etc. Quality and high satisfaction guarantee repeat customers. And they generate word-of-mouth referrals... the most targeted and least expensive way to develop leads, produce contracts, and increase profits. I can’t overemphasize this point enough. When I encounter someone who OVERdelivers (ex., our Australian FileMaker programmer), I'm “his” forever! However, on the flip side, start charging me too much for too little... and I start shopping for a better service. “Low pricing” could, but does not have to, mean “inexpensive” – that’s part of how you plan to position yourself. Actually, our FileMaker programmer has a high $-per-hour rate. But he turns out an amazing amount of great code for that rate. So I am happy, because I get great value. No matter how you plan to position your pricing, the value has to be there. Otherwise, you’re just a scam artist... or selling art in a gallery on Rodeo Drive!

Point #4 -- Make every moment and dollar count! Identify and focus on attaining your “Most Wanted Response” (MWR) (i.e., what you most want your visitor to do). For example, visiting your site, or subscribing to your newsletter, or reading an ad, you “most want” your visitor to contact you.

Service Sellers Masters Course

Everything you do must in some way help to attain that MWR. Strive to get the best possible traffic-building and lead-converting results for every dollar... and for every hour you spend on your business. Time is money. So don’t count your hours as zero cost simply because it does not cost you “out of pocket.” Assign your time a value as well.

However, maximizing profits does not imply that you must only minimize expenses. After all, if you spend no money or time on a business... you have no business! Action Steps 1) Fine tune your time-management skills. Whether your service business is a small home-based operation with a work force of 1 (you!) or a company with 510 employees, you are constantly in “multi-tasking” mode. Follow these simple but effective guidelines... • Touch it once and move to the next step. • Make lists, but stick to “The 6 Most Important Things.” • Plan how long each task will take. • Assign time slots for accomplishing each task. • Focus on the difficult/important projects first. • Throw stuff away that clutters your computer/office I’ve further reduced this to my 4 D’s, which appear on a yellow stickie on my computer. Every call on my time must be handled by one of the four D’s... DO, DUMP, DELEGATE, DELAY

2) Manage your business and money effectively. Focus on your bottom line, manage your cash flow and collect payments that are due. If you lack these skills, get training through books or business courses. Or purchase inexpensive accounting software programs to keep track of your records. 3) Market the smart way. Get the right message to the right people via the right media and tactics so they will respond and hire you for the contract, with the highest ROIs (Return on Investments) possible…

Service Sellers Masters Course

i) Build your own Theme-Based Content Site. This is the highest ROI technique for any service seller, yet most don’t dream of doing it. This course will put you five steps ahead of your competition. This type of site is loaded with high info-value Keyword-Focused Content Pages. These pages rank well with the Search Engines and will pull in more targeted traffic and get more prospects to contact you for further details about your service and/or hire you for the job (i.e., increase your Conversion Rate). Your profits grow geometrically when you concentrate on maximizing both traffic and Conversion Rates. And the Service Sellers Masters Course will show you exactly how to do it all! ii) Develop a powerful “Valuable PREselling Proposition” (VPP). Create an eye-catching short statement that sums up in a few words what sets you apart from the competition. For example, Mike’s Pizza restaurant has this VPP... “Delivery in 30 minutes or it’s free.” The message is simple, clear and “hot.” Weave your VPP into the fabric of your business. iii) Match marketing strategies to your target group and your business. Remember our earlier example about the two tax accountants, one local and one global in nature? The local bean counter should place ads (which include his Web site’s URL) on local community bulletin boards, in the local newspaper, etc. -- great locations for the general tax accountant to market his services. The other more specialized accountant would be better served placing his ads (with URL) in well-known financial investment e-zines or magazines that have a broad circulation base, and through Pay-Per-Click Search Engines. The two, however, benefit from some common techniques, too -- all covered in the coming DAYS. As well, both accountants will profit from offering a free opt-in newsletter off their Web sites. A good benefit-focused newsletter/e-zine builds a familiar and credible relationship with subscribers. (Don’t worry about these details right now. I’ll walk you through everything later in the course.) A service seller’s “sale” cycle (introduction --> trust foundation --> contact --> contract) is generally longer than a Netrepreneur who is selling his own product. And the Conversion Rate (the % of visitors who become clients) will be lower than if you were just selling a $20 e-book. But as we saw earlier, the “Return on Investment” is much higher when you consider the value of a lifetime client. So you can “afford” to budget more for marketing costs.

Service Sellers Masters Course

iv) PREsell! Don’t sell. Use great, and related, content that is of value to your visitor/potential client on your site, in your newsletters, and in your ads. It is the most effective way to build credibility, trust and an “open-to-hire” attitude in your visitors’ mindsets. “PREselling” is such a critically important concept that it deserves its own special spotlight. It will be the focus of the second part of DAY 1.

v) Guarantee your work. There is nothing more powerful than a simple statement or stamp that says “All Work Guaranteed.” Live up to your promise. vi) Provide verifiable testimonials that include full names, cities and contact information. An effective testimonial outlines a specific benefit, something that is relevant to your target group. It is “believable” – you can clean up gross typos/spelling mistakes but don’t turn a testimonial into a polished piece. It is proof that someone else has used your service and you more than lived up to her expectations. vii) Be super accessible. Place your contact information (toll-free phone number, a contact form, fax number, mailing address -- whichever way you want people to contact you) -- in highly visible locations. Publishing your e-mail address is an invitation to spammers to come calling. I no longer recommend that you make your email address public. Instead, put a contact form on your Web site. Form Build It!, part of the Site Build It! package, allows you to customize forms on your site so your clients can contact you easily. You select an e-mail address to receive the information. For an inside look at the whole system, see the Video Tour at… http://videotour.sitesell.com/

On your site, for example, place contact info at the bottom of every content page and, if you like, build a special bio page as well (i.e., some interesting background details about you, including a photo or two). Include a link to your contact form in your newsletter. Add your phone number and URL to your sig file. As you can see... “Easy and fast” should be the operative words for how people can reach you. Point #5 -- Make all traffic count... have a second income stream. Some visitors who land on your site may be overly cautious, or they may just be doing some preliminary research, or they may be a little short on funds at this

Service Sellers Masters Course

time, or whatever. There are many legitimate reasons why not all visitors followthrough and contact you about your service. Use this traffic to your advantage by PREselling related products (or noncompeting services) for merchants you represent through their affiliate programs. Action Step 1) Research and join affiliate programs of merchants who offer quality products that are related to your service and offer fair commissions. For example, let’s say that you are a dog trainer. A visitor who has a 3-month old puppy arrives on your site. She is just “shopping around” and wants to have identified the “perfect” trainer by the time her puppy is 5 months old. She doesn’t need your service now but she is very interested in the puppy books and grooming products that you are recommending. She clicks through to your merchants’ sites and buys! Two commissions equals additional income. It makes good business sense to diversify your income where you can. The more legs you have to stand on, the more stable you will be. If one income source takes a dip for any reason, additional income streams can keep your overall income steady. Point #6 -- Continue doing what is profitable. Stop what is not. Action Steps 1) Monitor and track your business constantly, especially the more abstract aspects like... knowing where your traffic is coming from, the satisfaction level of your clients, the new trends in your field, the effectiveness of your newsletter, ads, etc., etc. 2) Concentrate on actions that contribute positively to your bottom line and drop the ones that do not. In other words, stay on top of your business so that you can take advantage of new opportunities and avoid any pitfalls. OK, time for a philosophical perspective... In life, the vast majority of people just keep doing the “same old thing.” It seems easier that way. But it guarantees the “same old results.” So in the long run, it’s actually much, much harder. In the movie, “The Renaissance Man,” Danny De Vito’s character makes a profound statement... “The choices we make dictate the lives we lead.”

Service Sellers Masters Course

To paraphrase... “Where you are today is the result of all the choices and actions that you have made in your life.”

When he said that, I remember thinking, “You know, he’s right. Except in rare cases of extraordinarily good or bad luck, everyone basically ends up where they are as a result of choices they make and courses of action they take.” People tend to blame a lack of success in life on “bad luck” or “poor timing” or other people. And yes, at times, that can be accurate. A heck of a lot of factors beyond our control can blindside us. In the long run, however, as long as we persist in our efforts, these factors tend to even out and De Vito’s statement remains valid. Now, here’s the good news... E-commerce is simpler than life. Due to its digital nature, there are fewer variables... so the outcome is more controllable. Which means that we can boil De Vito’s statement down to “The #1 E-commerce Reality.” This Reality is almost self-evident, yet it’s so easy to forget. Your success with anything you do in the world of e-commerce flows from it. Internalize it and act upon it and you will succeed. Yes, it’s that fundamental. And that leads me to… *************************************************** The #1 E-commerce Reality “Nothing happens by accident in the world of computers, the Net, and customer response. There is always a reason for what happens, good or bad, and that reason is YOU.”

*************************************************** So… multiply your contacts and contracts five-or-more-fold. How? Not by working harder at your business, but by simply channeling your motivation in a better direction. Don’t sell! Instead, warm your visitors by PREselling them with great content that they value, respect and trust. They will contact you with pleasure and with an “open-to-hire” mindset, anxious to find out more about you and your service. And then it’s up to you to close the deal! 17

Service Sellers Masters Course

It’s your PREsell effort that will boost your traffic and Conversion Rate (CR). Which in turn maximizes your income. This brings us to our second philosophical premise... *************************************************** The #1 Service Sellers Reality... Your Conversion Rate (CR) will vary greatly depending on... 1) HOW YOU REACH your visitor, and… 2) WHAT YOU SAY to her, and… 3) HOW ACCESSIBLE YOU ARE.

*************************************************** Your CR depends upon what you do and how you do it. You do not need Lady Luck, Sir Serendipity or anyone else. There is always a reason for how well you do, and that reason always relates to what you do and how you do it. Once you realize this, then you know success really is do-able. Some people do succeed big-time… but not necessarily the first time. Just keep trying until you find the right approach. To quote Calvin Coolidge… "Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."

Of course, the goal of this 10-DAY Service Sellers Masters Course is to reduce the amount of trial-and-error persistence that will be required before you find your own successful formula! Why is The #1 Service Sellers Reality true?... 18

Service Sellers Masters Course

Because how you reach your customer, and what you say once you reach her, and how accessible you are directly affects your visitor’s mindset when she is trying to decide whether to contact you or not. A positive mindset turns into contact and a contract with amazing regularity. A negative one is near-impossible to overcome. And that is what “high-CR” service sellers have known all along. “Create content that fosters an ‘open-to-hire’ frame of mind.”

So write The #1 Service Sellers Reality onto a yellow Post-It Note and stick it onto your monitor... *************************************************** Your Conversion Rate (CR) will vary greatly depending on... 1) HOW YOU REACH your visitor, and… 2) WHAT YOU SAY to her, and… 3) HOW ACCESSIBLE YOU ARE.

*************************************************** OK. Take a quick stretch and then we’ll continue with the principle of PREselling. Back already? Let’s go...

1.2. PREselling... Get the Personal Contact This section deals with how to PREsell effectively. Let’s look at examples of how you can create negative mindsets in your visitors by making how-you-reachthem, what-you-say, or how-accessible-you-are boo-boos... 1) HOW To Reach Your Visitor... Free-For-All Sites (FFAs) are a great example of how not to reach people. For the most part, they have become so seamy and useless, that no matter what you say, you’re doomed from the start. You have no credibility. Compare this with how smart and open-minded your visitor feels when she finds you via a Search Engine!

Service Sellers Masters Course

2) WHAT You Say To Your Visitor... Don’t write a site purely devoted to “hard-selling” yourself and your service. Imagine a visitor who hits your site and reads an immediate sales pitch. That person will resist because she does not know you. Develop related content that PREsells your expertise, knowledge base and professionalism. 3) HOW Accessible You Are... Scrolling to the final page of your site to find out how to contact you creates unnecessary frustration and shows a lack of respect/interest in your visitor. Ready access to your phone number and/or Web contact means instant gratification when she wants to talk to you now. Now for a critical Action Step... Review your site or whatever other means you are using to reach and talk to prospective clients. Put yourself in your customer’s brain. What will she think, how will she feel, at each of the 3 major steps above? Consider how much higher your Conversion Rate (CR) would be if a visitor found you in a bona fide manner (ex., as a result of doing a search on a Search Engine), then became your “friend” (or your trusting admirer if you do a truly awesome job!) because you provided excellent content, and finally was able to communicate with you... pronto! The bottom line? Get inside your visitor’s head -- realize how she will feel each step of the way. Whatever you do, consider the impact on your visitor -- if it does not make her more open-to-hire, don’t do it. PREselling is really all about selling yourself and your service to your customer, every step of the way. You reach the right folks in a proper fashion, deliver valuable, appropriate editorial content that inspires their trust, and provide easy access to yourself so that when she is ready to reach out, you are there. Your CR will soar. It’s a two-step process that builds to a job contract... STEP 1 You PREsell to get an open-to-hire phone call or response to your contact form... that first contact. Once you have that... 20

Service Sellers Masters Course

STEP 2 You “sell” your service and close the deal with a contract. So, whatever you do, however you do it, PREselling should always pull your visitor one step closer to delivering your Most Wanted Response... ... an open-to-hire contact call or response to your contact form. If your visitors basically perceive a straight sales effort on your site, you’re selling, not PREselling. That means that the two-step process is now SELLSELL... Redundancy = Turned OFF visitor = LOW CR. But if you develop great content that leads to contact, you become a friend she can trust rather than a stranger making a sales pitch… Trust = Turned ON customer = HIGH CR. In other words, don’t push your visitor to that first contact, make her want to reach you. It makes all the difference if your visitor feels that it’s her idea to deliver your MWR. A question? Geez, I was about to grab a coffee. Fire away! Can you give me a concrete example of using content to PREsell?

You want “concrete”? OK, concrete you get. Here’s a real concrete, non-Webbased, service example that will succeed... It’s all about creating a Theme-Based Content Site that is loaded with KeywordFocused Content-Rich Pages. Your theme?... You love concrete. Yes, cement! It’s been your livelihood for years. “Concrete Solutions” is the name of your company and your VPP (“Valuable PREselling Proposition”) is “Service as Solid as the Rock of Gibraltar!” It’s also been your hobby, your passion... Concrete statues. Concrete painting. Decorative concrete. Concrete in the garden. Repairing concrete. Concrete molds. The various types of concrete. Hand trowels. For this example, I had to brainstorm topics for concrete. I know nothing about it. I chose it because it was the first thing to enter my head. But I could develop topics about concrete forever. More about developing high-profitability topics in DAY 3.

Service Sellers Masters Course

Anyway, let’s say that you decide to create a Theme-Based Content Site that is all about concrete. Your home page explains how your site is the site for everything concrete, from structural to esthetic. And it includes references to your services which range from consultations to customization to repair to custom molds/sculptures and everything in-between... and references as well to your finely-honed skills developed through years of experience and accumulated knowledge. You also, of course, create high-value content-jammed Keyword-Focused Content Pages. For example, your page about concrete statues explains all about how to make striking statues for the home and garden. You could even expand it into an entire “Statue Section,” with a page on the history of concrete statues and another one about how to market and sell the statues that the visitor makes. Your contact info is presented on the bottom of all of these pages. By creating truly excellent, high-value content you deliver exactly what your visitor sought at the engines and this content strongly reinforces your expertise in the world of concrete -- which in turn earns her trust and respect. By providing great content, you PREsell yourself and your services to your visitor. She sees you as a “Concrete Authority” and phones you, thus increasing your site’s Conversion Rate. In addition, you develop multiple streams of income by representing related and excellent merchants on your site (earning affiliate income from these noncompeting sites). You weave relevant, “in-context” text links right in the content, as appropriate. Links to... • Books about the topic (ex. concrete statues, if that’s what the page was about) • A garden supplier for concrete molds, trowels, etc. • And so forth. She trusts you, so she also trusts your recommendations. This is the way to go! If you have a site like this, and would like to add a new income stream, I’d love to have just a small piece of your attention on a site like this… perhaps a button link “Powered by SiteSell.com” or a page about this course. If you can figure out a way to make it fit on your site, I’d love to be with you. For more information about our 5 Pillar Affiliate Program...

Service Sellers Masters Course

http://affiliates.sitesell.com/

OK, we can summarize today’s session into a key lesson to take home. I am giving it this title... “The Road to Becoming a Master Service Seller” What’s the key? PREselling. Not selling. You must know how to PREsell! Basically, the Service Sellers Masters Course delivers the single most productive approach to income-generation. It will show you how to PREsell your way to high CRs. And... … at the same time, maximize traffic to your Web site. CONTENT

TRAFFIC

PRESELL

MONETIZE

And I guess that brings us to the bottom line for today... If you’re building terrific traffic to your site... and if your site is getting potential clients to phone you or use a contact form for more info on your service... and if you are closing the deal with a high percentage of them and getting job contracts... Isn’t that the roadmap for using the Net to build your service-selling business? Let’s summarize the whole point of PREselling with this question. Who would you respond to... … A stranger with a sales pitch? OR… … A knowledgeable person offering great information, who establishes true expertise and friendliness? DAY 1 has set the understanding that is the cornerstone of your Web business. From here we begin to build the framework. Before proceeding to DAY 2, please complete your DAY 1 Goal-of-the-DAY, and take note of your Ongoing Goal… Deepen and focus your understanding of this material. Re-read it once per week for the next eight weeks, monthly after that. As you progress through DAYS 2 through 10, it’s going to be easy to lose sight of the “big picture” presented today. And there’s another reason to re-read regularly… it will mean more and more to you as you gain each DAY’s new perspective.

Service Sellers Masters Course

In DAY 2, we’ll start the hands-on material. You’ll begin by identifying and developing your own Site Concept and high-profitability Keyword-Focused Topics. Getting off to the right start makes the structure solid. Let’s continue…

Service Sellers Masters Course

2. DAY 2 Position Your Service “Do What You Love... The Money Will Follow.” Goal-of-the-DAY... Determine the most profitable way to present your service in an online marketplace, whether your potential client is around the block or around the world. Brainstorm and discover if possible, three “themes” that relate to your service. Then narrow each one as tightly as possible, noting keyword opportunities, and a potential secondary income stream. You have just arrived at the most important part of your entire effort in using the Web to grow your service-selling business. Some of you may not have started one yet. And some of you may have a service business that you are looking to jump-start to higher sales. In any case, you really want to get going! And yes… Your start will be delayed if you prepare everything before you begin. But once you have completed preparations, you’ll roar ahead. There’ll be nothing to repair or repeat once you launch. The few hours or so that you spend here in preparation will determine exactly how big your success will be. Most people fail in any business because they don’t plan adequately. That’s three times as true for an Internet business and five times as true for what you are about to do. If you don’t take the time to position your service properly on the Net, nobody will find you... and you’ll be missing out on some fantastic opportunities.

2.1. PREpare, Not REpair Think about how you want to spend your time. Benjamin Franklin’s words may keep you on track through these beginning DAYS… “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

What’s the best online approach for your service business? Simple. Follow this 3-step process... #1) Position your service for success. 25

Service Sellers Masters Course

#2) Identify hundreds of HIGH-PROFITABILITY service-related keywords. #3) Identify non-competing merchant partners to leverage an additional income stream. So many small businesses fail to start at the beginning with Content. Instead, they start at the end with Monetization. They spend time and energy setting up a shopping cart and a merchant account or some other way of “collecting the money.” That’s putting the (shopping) cart before the e-horse of traffic. As we saw earlier, Monetization comes last. It’s the final result of doing everything else (C T P) correctly. The hardest part, where 98% of small businesses fail, is in attracting Traffic, the visitors who convert, into income. Yet many start with the cash register! The solution? The only solution?... Content

Traffic

PREsell

Monetize

Follow the advice here and I guarantee you’ll find golden opportunities you didn’t even know existed! If you position your service wrongly, if you develop the wrong theme to “tie-in” with your service, if you target the wrong keywords, and if you attempt to leverage your service business with the wrong complementary affiliate programs, if you start with monetization before you’ve built the content... You’ll get the wrong results. That is, no results. This section of the Service Sellers Masters Course focuses on setting the groundwork. It guides you past the barriers and hazards and sets you on the road that is right for you. Your road to success. You are embarking upon a truly rewarding journey. Have no doubts -- this is “winnable” e-commerce. It’s totally under your control. What you are about to read is likely a radical departure from what you have been doing. Take your time and read carefully... receive the key to becoming a Service Selling Master. OK, enough “kung-fu grasshopper” stuff. Back to real-time preparation. You have already started your journey in the right direction by completing the first preparatory step... 26

Service Sellers Masters Course

STEP 1 Understand PREselling and its effect on Conversion Rates: Business Basics. (DAY 1) This step is the foundation for all future actions. There are three more prep steps to tackle as well... STEP 2 Position your service for success! (DAY 2) Brainstorm several service-themed concepts, different angles that you can use to present your service. Discover the best “theme” that correlates with your service. Then narrow it down as tightly as possible so that it correlates to the service you offer, presents the richest keyword opportunities, and shows potential for secondary income streams. Remember... It takes just as much time to build a low-potential business as a high-potential one. So invest the time now to maximize your returns later. STEP 3 Develop HIGH PROFITABILITY theme-related keywords for your service. (DAY 3) Develop hundreds of possible service theme related keywords for your Site Concept, and then narrow them down to the ones with the most profitability. In other words, cast a Net (ahem!), over the Web to “catch” as many visitors as you can who will be interested in your service! Relax, it’s a snap once I introduce you to a few Net tools. STEP 4 Plan your monetization models. (DAY 4) Sure, your #1 priority is to PREsell your service on your Web site and to get that initial contact with a targeted prospective client. However, you must expect that a certain percentage of your site’s visitors will not be interested in acquiring your services. Maybe those visitors have different needs... maybe they are window-shopping... maybe they can’t afford you. Whatever the case may be, why let these visitors just “up and leave?” After all, you’ve worked so hard to get them to your site, right? Develop partnerships with several reputable, non-competing merchant partners to help convert those who are not interested in your service. Create an e-book and sell it. Or choose other monetization models that are appropriate for your business… http://buildit.sitesell.com/main/m.html 27

Service Sellers Masters Course

And, there’s another wonderful bonus to this strategy… Partnering with non-competing merchants actually increases the value of your site -- as you provide even more solutions for your visitors! A WIN-WIN result. “WIN” for your visitors. “WIN” for you. If you decide to leverage profit through a secondary source of income, DAY 4 is great fun. On that DAY, you will identify and select affiliate programs that excite you, fit your service theme, and leverage your income earning ability! Don’t rush through the prep DAYS. They are easy -- so it’s tempting to zoom. Don’t. Even though they are not difficult, they do require thoughtful consideration. I hate to be a nag, but please remember… Building a profitable business is a process. Take as much time as necessary to do each DAY properly. There is no stopwatch ticking. Some careful planning and fine-tuning will pay you big dividends down the road… down your road. Now’s the time to nod, say “Yes dear,” and move ahead...

2.2. Identify Possible Themes To Compliment Your Service If you’re going to promote your service and expand your customer base using the Net, potential clients have to be able to find you quickly and easily and be able to trust you. But simply finding you is not enough... They have to find you in a confidence-boosting manner. An endorsement from a valued friend or colleague, or a top ranking position for a keyword search on a Search Engine, or a referral from a strategic partner are the types of “leads” that boost your credibility. Contrast that with people who hear about your business via spam, FFA pages, exit pop-ups, and numerous other means. They have much less confidence in the quality of your service.

Service Sellers Masters Course

These visitors arrive with their collective guard up, wondering... “If this service is so great, would it really have to resort to such means to promote it?” Result? A terrible Conversion Rate.

Once a visitor finds you, the content on your site must cement that confidence by providing high-value, benefit-focused info -- exactly what your prospective client is looking for, wants and needs. Bottom line?... A visitor must find you in a credible fashion. And then you and your service must be perceived as being trust-worthy before she will be confident enough to contact or hire you. In DAY 2, we will do the groundwork for building a site that is “easy-to-find” on the Net -- a Theme-Based Content Site that works with the Search Engines so that you can achieve a “Top Ten” position in their search results. (Most surfers don’t have the patience to research past that point. It’s a big Web out there, with lots of sites to explore!) Your first action step is to discover the best “theme” that correlates with your service. Then narrow it down as tightly as possible so that you attract only the people who would be interested in your service (and, if you choose to do so, the products you are representing as an affiliate). Suppose, for instance, you are a personal trainer. Offline, you could simply promote your service as “Kyle Brown, Personal Trainer” and use ads in the local newspaper, business cards and friends’ recommendations to create a buzz around your service. Unfortunately, online, words like “exercise” for your site’s theme and “personal trainer” for your service are much too general to make any impact in the Search Engine world. There are thousands of different kinds of exercise and thousands of different trainers. Where do you fit in? If you are not able to be more specific, you might as well take a number and join the long line to nowhere. These two keywords, however, would probably be sufficient if you were creating a site only for visitors who already know or have heard about you (i.e., your existing clients or people in your region who have seen your offline promotions). But... If you’re hoping to use an online presence to expand your client base in and beyond your immediate locale (and create a second income stream), the people who don’t know you have to find you first... and the majority will come to you via keyword searches at the Search Engines (SEs). 29

Service Sellers Masters Course

Realistically, a certain number of visitors to your site are not ever going to become clients. However, there’s no need to waste this traffic as you will see in DAY 4.

The key to attracting targeted visitors to your site is to take your general service theme and narrow it down to a tight niche, which is what SEs like. Using that focus, you can pinpoint theme-related keywords that will interest a particular group of visitors and pull them to your site. This interest qualifies these surfers as potential customers for your service (i.e., your target group). Before I forget, there is a quick way to make a general keyword more specific. For example, you could use “personal trainer” + “the name of the city or communities you serve.” That way, if someone searches for... “personal trainer” + “Chicago” …your site will come up. And that’s good, because only qualified people in Chicago will perform this local search. These are prospective clients in your area.

Does all this sound a little complicated? Don’t panic. Creating a Theme-Based Content Site is very do-able, no matter what level of Net experience you have. Let’s begin at ground level -- identifying your theme. You have three ways to approach this... OPTION #1 -- Narrow the theme to reflect the true nature of your business. As an illustration, let’s say that you are an advertising consultant. Here’s what you would do… i) Identify your main clientele (budget-minded small businesses)... and your main service (low cost, highly effective advertising solutions). ii) Pinpoint the major solution your service provides or the problem it solves (provides clients with high-exposure for reasonable cost). iii) Condense this information into a single sentence... “Low cost advertising solutions for budget-minded small businesses!”

This type of exercise will be useful when you create your VPP (Valuable PREselling Proposition). A VPP is a short statement that highlights and makes you stand out from the crowd (in your area of expertise). We’ll examine this concept more closely later on in the course.

Another example? Sure. This time you are a personal trainer but the steps remain the same... 30

Service Sellers Masters Course

i) Identify your main clientele (pregnant women who want to remain fit throughout pregnancy) and your main service (individualized nutrition plan and a gentle stretching exercise program that is customized to how the woman is carrying the baby throughout her pregnancy). ii) Pinpoint the major solution your service provides or the problem it solves (keeps women fit, flexible and well-rested through the third trimester of pregnancy). iii) Condense this information into a single sentence... “Keeping pregnant woman fit and flexible though the third trimester of pregnancy!”

See how this theme is much more focused than “fitness trainer?” OPTION #2 -- Narrow the theme to effectively target a particular segment of your market. Let’s go back to the advertising example. Even if your advertising consulting business does provide a wide range of services to a wide range of customers, you’ll still need to narrow your theme if you intend to attain success within the framework of the Net. Remember that Search Engines like tightly focused sites and show their pleasure by giving these types of sites higher positions/ranking on the search results pages. With this in mind, you decide to focus on providing solutions to budget-minded small businesses. Watch the evolution of this theme as it tightens... Service: Advertising Consultant General Theme: Advertising General Focus: Advertising consultants Slight Focus: Small business advertising consultants Tighter Focus: Small business budget advertising consultants Of course, there is such a thing as tightening your service's theme too much... Too Much Focus: Small business budget advertising consultants for left-handed Norwegians OK, OK, I’m kidding. But you see what I mean? You have to be careful not to restrict your market too much, or your niche becomes too small. You won’t have the numbers to create or increase income. This is exactly why your theme has to be niched (to quote Goldilocks)... 31

Service Sellers Masters Course

“Just Right!” Don’t feel you have to narrow your general theme down to one specific niche at this point. Pick a few possible niches and let the keyword research you’ll perform in DAY 3 help you to finalize your decision.

OPTION # 3 -- Narrow your theme to take advantage of the profitable keyword opportunities you discover (as highlighted by keyword SUPPLYDEMAND-PROFITABILITY research that you will perform in DAY 3). Basically, this means narrowing your theme and building your site according to the interest displayed on the Net. Of course, this can be accomplished only if your service is somewhat “flexible” and can be smoothly “tied into” these keyword opportunities. You will choose keywords for your theme that... • Lead to a natural cross-sell of your service. • Show great opportunity for profitability -- plenty of demand (# of searches performed by surfers) with relatively little supply (few results returned by the SEs for those same keywords). • Permit a smooth referral to a merchant partner for commissionable sales. Of course, you have to balance niche-tightening with common sense and your own personal experience. If you are a personal trainer, you can’t suddenly switch over to being a gymnastic coach just because there is a lot of interest or demand for that service. And here’s an example where personal experience comes into play... As an advertising consultant, your keyword research indicates that there is a bigger online interest in budget-related consulting. However, it’s been your experience that big businesses are much more likely to hire you as an advertising consultant and, in general, tend to spend 10 times as much on your services as medium-sized businesses do. So you decide to stick with your current direction. Bottom line? As a service seller, your range of criteria for establishing the theme of your service site depends on three factors. The “best” theme must... 1) Be highly profitable -- there is a strong demand. This means that lots of people are willing to pay for your service. They will be actively searching for a site like yours, which is why your theme must be as narrow as possible. If it’s too general, your visitors won’t find you in the crowd. 32

Service Sellers Masters Course

Of course, there’s always the chance that your service’s theme can’t be tightened down, or for practical business reasons you just don’t want to narrow it any further. That’s fine -- only you know what’s best for your business.

2) Display plenty of opportunities for niche-related keyword targeting -these keywords provide you with different angles by which you can approach your theme. You want to find the angle with the highest demand and the lowest supply. This will make it easy to attract targeted traffic (i.e., interested potential clients) to your site because competition is limited. 3) Excite you -- passion is key to your online longevity. It’s difficult to stay committed to something you don’t like. A Theme-Based Content Site is definitely the way to go -- especially if you’re operating on a shoestring budget and are interested in attracting free qualified traffic from the Search Engines. This type of site is ideal for generating traffic, contacts, and contracts whether you provide a local or global service. It will help PREsell and convert your visitors -- no matter how close or far away they are! Site Build It! is best positioned to help you establish your service business on the Web. Want proof? http://case-studies.sitesell.com/

Time for a quick recap. In order to position your service on the Net, you need to narrow your theme. You can accomplish this by... • reflecting on the true nature of your business Or... • effectively targeting a particular segment of your market Or... • zone in according to demand on the Net (the best option for working with the Search Engines). If you followed the first two guidelines, you probably have narrowed your theme choices down to a handful of possibilities. At this point, you need to know how profitable each one is before you can make your final selection for your theme. If you chose the third guideline, you are anxiously waiting to narrow your theme according to demand... to actually start your theme-identification process! Regardless of which option you chose, your next step is... keyword research. 33

Service Sellers Masters Course

And that’s where we’re going next! Before proceeding to DAY 3, please complete your DAY 2 Goal-of-the-DAY, and take note of your Ongoing Goal... Revisit this only if you want to build an entirely new different content site. Now that you have identified some potential themes for your service-selling site, let’s find out where the profitability lies in DAY 3...

Service Sellers Masters Course

3. DAY 3 Develop Profitable Keywords “Why do you rob banks?” the officer asked infamous bank-robber Willy Sutton, moments after he arrested Willie... “I go where the money is.” Goal-of-the-DAY... Use the SUPPLY and DEMAND window to build a MASTER KEYWORD LIST, fully researched, of 5 HIGH-PROFITABILITY KEYWORDS for each service theme you developed. Let’s set the scene. You are a personal trainer who lives, breathes, eats and sleeps fitness. You head straight to that part of any bookstore. Your friends beg you to talk about something else “for a change!” And now, you want to take your expertise onto the Net -- to acquire new customers from your local marketplace, as well as to generate additional income from a global market as an affiliate. In DAY 2, you narrowed your service theme for your site and you have three encouraging possibilities. You are now ready to brainstorm theme-related topics or keywords (for each of these 3) that will attract a large number of interested targeted visitors to your site and prune out those that won’t. With this overall perspective, you can then easily identify keywords with the highest profitability for each potential theme. All set? Remember you are a “personal trainer” in this trial run so don’t take off your running shoes just yet. Power up your very own Keyword Tool Center. There are three “WINDOWS” of information here... 1) DEMAND 2) SUPPLY 3) BREAKOUT Open your Internet browser and start with... WINDOW #1 The DEMAND WINDOW Time to brainstorm some Keyword-Focused Topics.

Service Sellers Masters Course

You have decided that you will niche your service strictly according to surfers’ demand (Option 3 in DAY 2). Smart move! It’s time to use Search It!... http://searchit.sitesell.com/ This powerful little tool is simple to use. Keep it handy on your desktop -perhaps in the upper left corner of your browser. It’s the only e-commerce research tool you will need for your business. OK, let’s fire up Search It!. As you can see, there are four potential steps involved. STEP 1 and STEP 2 both utilize a drop-down menu.

I highly recommend that you click on the link, “Click Here for information About Search Type AFTER completing Step 1 & Step 2,” every time you do a search. These short tutorials will help you get the most out of your research. Now that the orientation is over, let’s get started. STEP 1… Select “Brainstorming” from its menu. STEP 2… Select “Wordtracker Free Keyword Tool” from its menu. Don’t forget to click on the help link before you proceed! STEP 3… Enter the keyword “exercise” (without the quotes). In this course, the term “keywords” includes both single words and multiword phrases. When building a keyword list, never limit yourself to single words. Many more people search using multiple-word keywords composed of two, or even three, words.

Since there is no STEP 4 for this particular search, you can now hit the Search It! button. (Do not use the Enter or Return key.) 36

Service Sellers Masters Course

From now on, you will see these steps presented in this format… Search It! > Brainstorming (STEP 1) > Wordtracker Free Keyword Tool (STEP 2) > exercise (STEP 3) OK, onwards and upwards. Got your DEMAND WINDOW ready? Here is a sampling of the most common keywords that Web surfers search upon that contain the word “exercises”… 2190 2115 2102 989 907

knee exercises group exercises exercise shoulder exercises free printable exercise log

The number in the left column is the number of times that each keyword was searched in the preceding month based on Wordtracker’s data collection. In a sense, it’s an indication of the demand (by your potential visitors) for each keyword that contains the keyword “exercises.” (You can also try the other search types in the Brainstorming category to expand your keyword list.) You may also need to perform a few keyword searches to find the best grouping of specific keywords that relate to your site. Let’s say, for example, that you first tried doing a search for the keyword “fitness.” This returned a ton of listings but 98% of them were too general or too difficult to “tie-in” to your personal training service in a natural way. The keyword “exercises” is much better! It came up with new keywords that are more in line with what you are hoping to achieve online – there’s a natural “tie-in” (or relationship) to your service and expertise, as well as the opportunity for additional income. Let’s continue with this scenario… You target the keyword phrase “abdominal exercise” and write a great article about the relationship between strong abdominal muscles and pain-free healthy backs, important injury-prevention knowledge to have as people age. As a certified personal trainer, your credibility is already established. Your wellwritten, well-researched article cements that credibility. Your visitors will be interested to see what else you do or offer. And when you recommend a book, video, or exercise machine, your visitor is more likely to heed your advice and make a purchase... CLICK-Ka-CHING! 37

Service Sellers Masters Course

Every visitor receives an “in-context” PREsell message about your service on your Web page but only those within a one hour driving radius of you will convert from visitor to client status. However, all visitors can potentially earn you income, no matter where they live, if you are an affiliate of related, non-competing merchants. And that’s the best part. You can expand your base far beyond those select visitors who are searching for “personal trainer” close by to their home. As I mentioned earlier, using “exercises” as the overall starting theme is fine, but it’s far too general to be anything more than a guide. It’s such a massive and all-encompassing theme that there’s no way you’d be able to build a site that covered it all. You need to narrow your theme in a profitable direction. So let’s stay with “abdominal exercise.” OK, you have a good idea of what your potential visitors want. You have the demand for a variety of keywords related to your potential theme (some of which will become your high-profitability Keyword-Focused Topics for your content pages on your site). And you have decided to continue researching with the keyword “ab exercise.” Now it’s time for... WINDOW #2 The SUPPLY WINDOW Ready to prune out the low-profitability topics? Before we can start pruning, we need to check out the SUPPLY of your relevant “exercise” keywords. In other words, you need to know how many sites already provide content for the keywords that we found in your DEMAND WINDOW (i.e., WINDOW #1 above). Let’s continue with “abdominal exercise” Open Search It! once again. (You did put it on your desktop, right?) Search It! > Competition (STEP 1) > Yahoo! Search Vertical Brainstormer (STEP 2) > abdominal exercise (STEP 3) This search yielded Results 1- 100 of 6,390,000 for abdominal exercise. Repeat the same process for each of the “exercise”-containing keywords that you found in your DEMAND WINDOW. Yes, seriously, do a search for each keyword. It is a bit tedious, but the research will pay off in spades. But…

Service Sellers Masters Course

… before you do that, create a Master Keyword List. I recommend that you do this either in a simple text file or via a database or spreadsheet program. A database or a spreadsheet will speed things up and provide you with extra functionality. OK, here’s what to do with your Master Keyword List. Create four columns and label them KEYWORD, DEMAND, SUPPLY, and SUPPLY SITE INFO. For each “exercise”-containing keyword in your DEMAND Window... 1) Enter the keyword itself into the column labeled KEYWORD -- copy-and-paste to avoid typos. 2) Enter how many times it is searched (info that you found in the DEMAND Window) into the DEMAND column. 3) Enter how many sites Search It! finds (in your SUPPLY Window) in your column labeled SUPPLY. 4) Read the listings for the Top 20 sites that Search It! returns for each keyword. Make brief notes in the fourth column, SUPPLY SITE INFO -- no need to visit the sites yet (perhaps just a quick click to the home page if you need a bit more info). Just get a flavor for the kinds of sites that each KEYWORD search delivers. I’ve started your Master Keyword List for you... KEYWORD abdominal exercise3

DEMAND 319

SUPPLY

SUPPLY SITE INFO

6,390,000

Decent content-related material, abdominal/back health and education, plus sales of electronic aids sales of electronic ab gadgets.

And, of course, it’s always a good idea to check the SUPPLY and DEMAND of other “non-abdominal” exercise-related keywords on your list such as “fat burning exercises” or “inner thigh exercises.” Add as many notes as you like for SUPPLY SITE INFO. I’ve kept it very brief here, since it is only an example. Once you see a pattern emerge (plenty of demand and reasonably little supply), sit up and take notice. This may very well be the perfect theme for your service site!

Service Sellers Masters Course

Finally, make two more columns, one labeled POSSIBLE PARTNERS and the other called IDEAS FOR CONTENT (use this window to jot down content-related tie-ins to your service). This will set us up for in-depth “SUPPLY WINDOW” research. Review as many of the sites you find as you like. I’d suggest at least the first 10-20 sites for each keyword. But you may find merchants in need of traffic help (i.e., you!) deeper down. As you get into this in-depth research, you’ll notice three types of sites... • irrelevant -- for whatever reason (off-topic, geographic, lousy site, etc.), they just don’t fit. Skip these. • merchant -- in POSSIBLE PARTNERS, enter what kind of merchandise they sell. If they have an affiliate program that fits your service-themed concept, enter the URL of the “join page” for the affiliate program of that merchant. These are indeed “POSSIBLE PARTNERS.” Even better, you’re automatically organizing the POSSIBLE PARTNERS according to each keyword -- so you are already pre-planning each Keyword-Focused Content Page’s “in-context” text links! You are setting the groundwork for the M stage. • content -- these sites are your direct competitors. They make money through services and affiliate programs, too. And good news! They’ll speed up your learning curve by giving you a lot of information. Why? Because they’ve already done a ton of work for you! Here’s what to do... 1) As you review these content sites, you may get some great ideas for content on your own site. Enter these ideas into the IDEAS FOR CONTENT column. 2) Browse the site, drilling down into the content. Click on the banner ads and text links, following these links out to their destinations, to see the kind of merchants that they have chosen as affiliate-partners. Or perhaps it’s a straight advertising deal -- make a note of these merchants as potential advertisers, too. If a given merchant fits your concept and has an affiliate program, enter the kind of merchandise it sells, and the “join page” URL, as you did just above. Once again, you are preparing for the M stage. Quick tip: It can be a tedious pain to look for a link to a merchant’s affiliate program. Some home pages are quite crowded. Here’s how to find the link quickly... 1) See if you can find reference to it with a quick scan of the top, left and bottom navbars (graphic or text links). If not...

Service Sellers Masters Course

2) Do a quick find on the home page. Press on the control+f keys on your keyboard (command+f if you are using a Mac). Then enter “affil” (the first few letters is fine and reduces chances of a typo) into the box the window that pops up. Try also for “assoc” (short for “associate”) and “refer” (short for “referral” or “referrer” program). 3) Use the site’s search tool or online support chat (if it has one) or 1-800 line, or send an e-mail. If the site doesn’t have an affiliate program, ask if the Webmaster is interested in buying pay-per-click advertising (more on selling pay-per-click advertising a bit later on in the course). If you still can’t find it after that, forget it. They probably don’t have an affiliate program.

While we are researching, here’s another sidebar with additional information on how to research partners. You can also find MERCHANT sites via Search It!. Select the “Inbound Link Opportunities” category (STEP 1). Obtain content sites by reviewing the top 20+ search results from Search It!’s Competition category (STEP 1). Or use its Monetization category and choose this search type, “Find Products/Programs at ClickBank” (STEP 2).

Continue on for the remaining keywords, until you have completed all six columns for all of your HIGH-PROFITABILITY “exercise”-containing keywords. Expected results?... • lots of good content ideas to tie-in to your service C • some good leads to merchants who could need pay-per-click advertising from you a bit later M • a few merchants who have affiliate programs (but the real treasure trove for affiliate programs will come in DAY 4!). Please note... I can’t over-emphasize the importance of your Master Keyword List. Your entire site, including its most profitable directions, lies in this blueprint. Please... do this. If you find creating your own list (with a database or spreadsheet program) to be too daunting, and if a text list is too awkward, let Site Build It!’s server-side 41

Service Sellers Masters Course

Brainstorm It! do your work for you! Click here to see this easy-to-use tool in action… http://demo.sitesell.com/day2/day-2-f.html Want to accumulate even more information about the intensity of the competition (i.e., the SUPPLY of keywords) for top rankings for your keywords? Investigate other search types in Search It!’s Competition category. (I told you that you would use this versatile tool often!)… One special note... If your search on a keyword returns sites that seem inappropriate, it’s likely that your keyword does not reach the people you thought. For example, let’s say that you want to write a page about how to price products. This page is meant to show e-commerce merchants how to price new products. But your research shows that surfers searching for the keyword “price” are not business folks looking for “pricing” info. They are consumers looking for deals. Save yourself time and money... “price” is not a good word to focus upon. Repeat for the keyword “pricing.” BINGO! This is the right word.

Your DEMAND WINDOW search generated many “exercise-containing” keywords, along with the demand for each keyword. And your SUPPLY WINDOW search revealed the number of sites (i.e., the supply of sites) that provide information about each keyword, as well as many leads to possible merchant-partners and even some ideas for content. Now it’s time to pick the keywords with the best profitability. These will be the keywords with high demand (i.e., tons of searches according to Search It!) and low supply (not too many sites found)... Eliminate any words that appear too competitive (i.e., supply is too high in WINDOW #2 or bidding competition is too intense), especially if they are not searched upon very often (i.e., demand is low in WIND0W #1). And especially if there do not seem to be many POSSIBLE PARTNERS for them! In other words, if Search It! shows a keyword being searched upon only a couple of hundred times in the previous month, and your Competition search returns 20,000 sites, you can be pretty sure that's not a profitable combination! Your best words would have high demand (results in DEMAND WINDOW are low)... And... 42

Service Sellers Masters Course

Low supply (i.e., low supply of competing sites turn up in your search, or the bidding competition is low). This is a rough protocol, so don’t become a slave to it. Follow these two general guidelines... 1) Eliminate only the worst combinations of high supply and low demand and low number of possible partners (if you plan to monetize through affiliate marketing). 2) When you’re ready to write your site, start with the keywords that have the best combination of high demand and low supply (especially the ones that you really enjoy and know!) and a good number of possible partners (if you plan to monetize through affiliate marketing). As you start to see patterns for the kind of sites that appear in your SUPPLY SITES and POSSIBLE PARTNERS and IDEAS FOR CONTENT notes, you’ll refine your service site concept so that it best matches your service, and your potential opportunities. Ultimately, you’ll create Keyword-Focused Content Pages that... • fit with your service site concept theme And... • have a good supply/demand ratio And... • have a good number of potential partners (if you plan to monetize through affiliate marketing). And... • that you enjoy writing about. Two windows down and one to go... WINDOW #3 -- BREAKOUT WINDOW By now, you should have identified a nice tight service-related theme/topic for your site. And you very likely have enough profitable keywords to keep you busy building pages for a while. But...

Service Sellers Masters Course

What if you need additional high-profitability keyword topics? What if you have not identified a true “winning” theme to build your service site around? What if there do not appear to be sufficient keyword opportunities within your service’s theme? Well, you could broaden the scope your site somewhat. However, as a service seller, your service site concept must be tied tightly to your service if you hope to PREsell it with any degree of efficiency in the online environment. For that reason, it’s important not to stray too far from your concept (“exercise” for this situation). No single keyword, no matter how profitable it may calculate out to be, makes or breaks a business. The overall quantity and quality of all your pages that address a wide variety of all the keywords are, ultimately, what makes your business snowball and gain momentum. The big money (i.e., your income) comes from selling your service. As a means to that end, develop a wide variety of profitable keywords, and then build Keyword-Focused Content Pages (KFCPs) around them. Deliver high-value information to attract and PREsell visitors effectively. C

P is the engine that drives your business.

Your ROI (Return on Investment) means that you can also go beyond keyword opportunities. Affiliate marketers, for instance, operate on the narrowest of profit margins and need to focus on keyword opportunities in order to drive low cost traffic from the SEs. You, on the other hand, may gain hundreds, thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars from a single new customer, so you can justify building your business with some advertising expenses as well. So the best strategy is to stay within your theme, but do some research with other theme/concept related words. In our example, we started researching with “exercise,” a basic concept keyword. Now let’s BREAKOUT a bit. Look for related keywords. Once again, we turn to Search It!… Search It! > Brainstorming (STEP 1) > Google AdWords Keyword Tool (STEP 2) > exercise (STEP 3) Here is my partial list… stretching exercises core exercises strength exercises hip exercises

Service Sellers Masters Course

Use these words in two ways... 1) Use the ones that fit your site concept “as is” to create more KeywordFocused Content Pages, (ex., a Web page about “knee exercise”). Add these to your Master Keyword List and complete the DEMAND, SUPPLY, SUPPLY SITES, POSSIBLE PARTNERS, and IDEAS for CONTENT columns for each one. Or a bigger idea... 2) Extract “General Keywords,” like “weight lifting.” Feed these exercise-related “concept-level” words back into your DEMAND (#1) and SUPPLY (#2) WINDOWS to brainstorm and prune a whole new series of high-profitability keywords that may help shape your site’s theme. Add these to your Master Keyword List, too. (Or start a new list for any “conceptlevel” keyword that is different-and-strong enough to stand as a separate site.) “Weight training” related keywords would be excellent to investigate and possibly target, especially since they fit nicely with your “exercise” theme, and allow you to provide the credibility-building content that PREsells your service. You can “BREAKOUT” of every possible theme if you use your imagination and Search It!. Think hard! There are always interesting opportunities related to your service that you can use to both PREsell your own business and those of your merchant partners. All it takes is some creativity. You can keep right on breaking out in WINDOW #3, then brainstorming in WINDOW #1 (demand) and pruning after doing research in WINDOW #2 (SUPPLY). You will come up with original, non-obvious keywords and affiliate programs that are right for your target market and that are part of major new directions related to exercise. It’s worth noting that these keywords may not necessarily contain the word “exercise.” Here’s another way to BREAKOUT. Use this really interesting feature... Search It! > Metasearch (STEP 1) > IxQuick (STEP 2) > exercise (STEP 3) In this search, a site gets one star for every major Search Engine that scores it in their Top 10 (i.e., on Page #1 of search results). So it’s a fast way to check all the major engines at the same time. Any site on the first page of this search result that has three stars or more is doing well. These sites know what they’re doing and are not there by accident. Two stars is good. One star could just be a fluke. Ready? Search for “exercise.”

Service Sellers Masters Course

At the time of this writing, acefitness.org scored tops with seven stars. Click to that site. Then go to the menu of your browser... VIEW > SOURCE This shows the HTML source code for this page. Look for the “META keywords tag” within this page’s HTML... <META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="exercise, fitness, American Council on Exercise, ACE, ACE-certified, ACE FitnessMatters magazine, ACE Fitness Matters magazine, Certified News magazine, Personal Trainer Manual, books, manuals, study guides, personal trainer certification, personal training certification, certified personal trainer, personal trainer, fitness certifications, CEC, Continuing Education Credits, fitness certification exams, group fitness instructor, health information, fitness information, ACE Fit Facts, Fit Facts, fitness professional, fitness centers, non-profit, fitness organization, non-profit fitness advocate, workout watchdog, active lifestyles, physical activity, physical education, sports medicine, recreation, Operation Fit Kids, OFK, youth fitness, youth exercises, abs, ab exercise, abdominal exercise, aerobic exercise, corporate wellness, diet and exercise, exercise program, fitness training, fitness trainer certification, fitness education, personal fitness certification, physical fitness, water exercise, weight training, youth fitness education, fitness centers, health professionals, workouts, strength training, yoga, Pilates, kickboxing, aquatic sports, cycling, spinning, nutrition, fitness apparel, ACE-Certified apparel, American College of Sports Medicine, ACSM, International Health Racquet and Sports Association, IHRSA, NIRSA">

Yes, this site makes a common mistake of listing tons of different keywords. But that’s OK... they’ve done some brainstorming for you! Try other sites on the first page of your Search It! results. Or do a new search at Search It!. Depending upon your time restraints, repeat the process for all of your high-profitability “exercises”-containing keywords. One final note… If a particular search uncovers a merchant site, and if it has an affiliate program that fits your Site Concept, enter what kind of merchandise it sells. Also insert the URL of the “Join Page” into POSSIBLE PARTNERS for that keyword (as explained above). If it’s a “content site,” review its content and follow the “links out” -- add to your POSSIBLE PARTNERS and IDEAS FOR CONTENT columns.

OK, let’s get out of these windows for a moment. They have focused on the “KEYWORD END” of brainstorming... KEYWORD END .................................. CUSTOMER END (BRAINSTORM & PRUNE) -- KFCPs -- (BRAINSTORM & PRUNE) 46

Service Sellers Masters Course

Now let’s look at the CUSTOMER END. Get into your visitor’s shoes. Answer these questions... Question… Who is she? Question… What is she trying to do? Question… What other stuff does she look for? For this discussion, we’ll use the pricing consultant example that we explored briefly above. Why not “exercise?” Because I know nothing about exercise. Up to now, you’ve learned techniques that anyone can use for any topic. But, for this part, you do need to know your customer and your concept. My concept is to create a site that is all about pricing. It’s something that I know a lot about and enjoy. I’ve done my prep actions. I am already an affiliate of SiteSell. I’ll also provide links to good pricing books at an online bookstore as well as other related vendors. (Specific details on how to choose affiliate programs appear in DAY 4). Let’s assume that I’ve “three-windowed” my Concept Keyword, “pricing,” to death. Now I want to approach things from the CUSTOMER END. This empowers me to come up with keywords that go way beyond the KEYWORD END. And that’s where the money is. Your site has two visitors that you must please… the Search Engines’ spiders and your human surfers. First, let’s answer the “visitor questions” that we posed earlier... Q -- Who is she? A -- Writers, software companies, or manufacturers in any industry you can imagine. I’ll come up with a lot more answers and then figure out how to reach each one. I’ll be specific and break them down into niche segments. What do they do? What kinds of things would they search for at a Search Engine that is related to their occupations? Q -- What is she trying to do? A -- As an affiliate of SiteSell, I know that Site Build It! can help her... she just doesn’t know it yet.

Service Sellers Masters Course

I’ve figured out every way that she could possibly search for that information (ex., and I’ve even run those through WINDOWS #1 and #2! But now for the million dollar question... Q -- What other stuff, besides pricing, does she look for? A -- She'll look for anything that is related to her business. I have to figure out what problem a member of my target market is trying to solve when she does a search. I’ll trace her steps as she develops her product, writes her site, builds traffic, takes orders and ships product. I’ll intercept her with my message. What words would she look for? My site must solve that problem. An example... what’s a common issue for people selling products on the Net? “Fulfillment,” just to name one. “Taking orders,” “shipping,” “product development,” “market research,” “feasibility studies,” “writing sales copy,” “credit card processing,” “shipping,” to name just a few others. There are so many starting points that the head spins. People looking up terms like the ones qualify themselves as serious business people with serious needs. Exactly the right kind of people for Site Build It!. So I’ll intercept them when they search for, let’s say, fulfillment-related topics, provide them with great content about fulfillment, and then also introduce them to the concept of effective Web marketing. I’ve added a whole new major direction -- and income stream -- to my site simply by thinking about my target’s other needs. Are you thinking... “What does fulfillment or customer service or sales have to do with Site Build It!?”

Absolutely... positively... everything. Am I suggesting that you fool business people who are looking for information about these topics? No, not at all. Here’s why... if someone is searching for “fulfillment” (in the non-Zen sense of the word!), she already has a product. A product that needs a Web site that works. Obviously, Keyword-Focused Content Pages about building a Web presence are much more tightly targeted to our SBI! product. It’s easy to write a good page that ends in a recommendation to visit the sales site. And of course, this is a “must do.” It's easy and effective. 48

Service Sellers Masters Course

But let’s say that someone just found my page about order fulfillment. It’s a terrific high-value page that delivers just what she was searching for. But how to lead that into a click to SBI!? Remember this golden nugget… PREselling is really about building trust and credibility with your potential customer through great content. So, once I have PREsold with great content about fulfillment issues on the Net, I lead into a few closing links. First, I join the program of a good fulfillment company. I provide a link to them. Then, I add a link like this… -------------------------------------------------------------Before you can sell and fulfill orders online, you have to first attract targeted traffic and gain their trust. Site Build It! is the solution. Build a site that attracts a strong, endless stream of free, warm, willing-to-buy visitors... success guaranteed. http:/buildit.sitesell.com/

-------------------------------------------------------------CLICK! Our target customer does not necessarily have to be looking for site-building info -- if we can intercept her in any of her daily needs, we can make her aware of this wonderful product that she will realize she needs. Bottom line? If your keyword attracts your target market, there is always a way, with just a touch of creativity, to stretch her to other products that are also likely to fall within her “list of needs.” It’s all part of effective communication on the Net. Wow! What a DAY! Take three little WINDOWS (DEMAND, SUPPLY, and BREAKOUT). Approach matters from two different directions (from the KEYWORD END and the CUSTOMER END). And you’ve got a great list of profitable content topics, almost ready to write itself! Before proceeding to DAY 4, please complete your DAY 3 Goal-of-the-DAY, and take note of your Ongoing Goal... Before proceeding to DAY 4, please complete your DAY 3 Goal-of-the-DAY, and take note of your Ongoing Goal... 49

Service Sellers Masters Course

Use each of the SUPPLY, DEMAND and especially the BREAKOUT WINDOWS, to grow your Master Keyword List ever bigger, ever more profitable. This yields the raw material for new Keyword-Focused Content Pages. Consider getting Site Build It!’s Brainstorm It! to do it all for you. It can build, research, and help you analyze an endless stream of highprofitability keywords. What a time-saver! No other product does what the Site Build It! does at such an affordable price and guarantees it… http://compare.sitesell.com/

Phew! That was a long and complicated section, I know. Here’s the good news... you’re over the hump. It all gets easier from here on in. Please, please, please note... It’s important to take your time and work through the strategies and examples until you “get it” and “do it.” DAY 2 (Brainstorm Your Site Concept) and DAY 3 (Develop High-Profitability Topics) literally build the engine of your business. So take your time and stay with it. Your business, and you, deserve this effort. Time to re-quote Calvin Coolidge... “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

Stick with it. The 10 DAY plan of action works... if you work it. And by using Site Build It!, you can avoid the tedious, complicated parts of traffic-building and achieve impressive results, regardless of what kind of business you own (or hope to own)… http://find.sitesell.com/ So take a relaxing breath of air and let’s keep going…

Service Sellers Masters Course

4. DAY 4 Plan Your Monetization Models “Show me the money!” -- Jerry Maguire (1996) Goal-of-the-DAY... The overall goal is to expand your site’s blueprint by planning how you could potentially monetize visitors interested in your niche (i.e., Site Concept), starting with your primary monetization model, service selling. You will also consider appropriate secondary monetization models, such as affiliate programs, to diversify your Web income and give your business stability. It’s time for a quick check-up. So far you have… • examined PREselling and its effect on Conversion Rates (DAY 1) • identified a potential topic for your Theme-Based Content Site (DAY 2) • brainstormed a list of profitable keywords (DAY 3) DAY 4 continues your excellent preparation efforts. The finish line is in sight where you will register your domain name, confidently knowing that you have not missed a step along the track. That’s why you will be “thinking” about “M” now, and “doing” it after you have C T P well in control. The ideal Site Concept should give you enough flexibility to generate income through your primary source of income, plus two or three or more additional streams. As a service seller, your #1 goal has to be the “sale” of your service -- getting that first contact from your prospect. That’s perfectly understandable. Even so, don’t discount the idea of affiliate marketing and its potential secondary income. This DAY will highlight the affiliate monetization model but keep in mind that you do have other models to consider… http://buildit.sitesell.com/ Out of every 100 visitors to your site, it’s likely that only a small percentage will follow through and contact/hire you for your professional service. The others? Well, maybe they have slightly different needs. Perhaps they are looking for a lower-cost option or they are “just looking, thanks.” There may be any number of reasons why a visitor may not be an ideal candidate for your service.

Service Sellers Masters Course

You could, if you wished, let those visitors proceed merrily on their way. But why would you? After all, you worked very hard to get them to your site, right? So why not make recommendations for niche-related, non-competing products and/or services that may be more suited to the needs of those visitors? That way, your traffic is not wasted. Instead, it supports an additional revenue stream. But there’s another bonus... By offering links to non-competitive sites that provide solutions for your visitors, your site becomes an even more valuable resource. This is doubly true if your service is locally based and unlikely to be of interest to anyone outside of an hour’s drive of your office. For example, let's say that you are an interior designer and your site is all about information about “home decor.” Where do you find related ebooks or digital products to recommend as an affiliate? A fast way is to use Search It!... 1) Select the “Monetization” category in STEP 1. 2) Choose “Find Products/Affiliate Programs At ClickBank” in STEP 2. 3) Enter the term "home decor" in STEP 3. Your search turns up four potential e-book candidates. Decide which one(s) you want to promote and you're off and running! ClickBank guides you through the set-up process. Tip: Always select the best, related products to represent as an affiliate and group them according to your high-profitability keywords.

Take-home lessons? They boil down to the following points… • Ideally, you don't want to leave any money on the table. Your visitor may not respond to your primary Most Wanted Response, but she may be attracted to one of your secondary offerings. • The key is to never be dependent on any one income source -- “all your eggs in one basket” is a high-risk strategy. By diversifying, you increase your revenue, stabilize your business, and take charge of your own business destiny. DAY 4 is all about getting a feel for possible monetization models before you go on to create your domain name. For example, if you narrow your niche/Site Concept too much, or position your business wrongly, you might limit your opportunities unnecessarily… profitable opportunities, that is. 52

Service Sellers Masters Course

With monetizing in mind, let's look first at the affiliate model as a secondary income stream. Get ready to… Grow a list of good merchants with affiliate programs that have product lines that fit. Then choose the best ones and group them according to high-profitability keywords. For example, you may want to investigate Amazon’s aStore… http://astore.amazon.com/ or eBay’s Editor Kit… https://www.ebaypartnernetwork.com/files/hub/en-US/index.html Yes, you have already started this process on DAY 3 by using Search It! to build groups of POSSIBLE PARTNERS for each keyword in your Master Keyword List. However, DAY 3 was more focused upon getting good ideas for content and a feel for your market space (DEMAND, SUPPLY, SUPPLY SITE INFO). Now it’s time to grow your list of POSSIBLE PARTNERS…

4.1. Grow A List Of Possible Partners Remember how we brainstormed the list of KEYWORDS and then chose the best? We're going to choose affiliate partners in the same way. And, of course, Search It! will be our super-efficient assistant as usual. Solid research sets a solid foundation. That’s why the strategies below try to cover almost every angle for choosing POSSIBLE PARTNERS. However, being this thorough can be overwhelming, especially if you are already time-crunched. So pick and choose the strategies that you know you can realistically execute. And then do them! I highly recommend that you do at least four types of searches if at all possible. You want to increase your chances of finding quality affiliate programs that fit best with your business blueprint. But more importantly, you want to be confident about the merchants that you represent!

4.1.1. Grow Through Search Engines A good place to start your search for merchants would be, of course, at the Search Engines! Do a search for one of your keywords, plus the word “affiliate.” Let’s use this example... +ab exercise +affiliate 53

Service Sellers Masters Course

(The “+” sign means that both words must appear on the Web page returned by the search.) Now open Search It! and do this search… Search It! > Straight up Search (STEP 1) > Google, no quotes (STEP 2) > +ab exercise +affiliate (STEP 3) If you have time, try a second search for the same term. Search It! > Straight up Search (STEP 1) > Yahoo!, no quotes (STEP 2) > +ab exercise +affiliate (STEP 3)

4.1.2. Grow Through Directories... Search and/or Drill Down Directories are also a good place to research POTENTIAL PARTNERS. An interesting place to start is… Search It! > Inbound Link Opportunities> Yahoo! Wide (STEP 2) > exercise (STEP 3) > ab exercise (STEP 4) Since this is a large directory and there is a substantial annual fee, it has only serious merchants. Many of the sites listed here will have affiliate programs so this search is like hitting pay dirt in a gold mine. Simply enter your Site Concept word and hit Search It!.

4.1.3. Grow Through Specialized Affiliate Directories Now let’s investigate your POSSIBLE PARTNERS and add some new merchants, too. How? Easy... Search It! > Monetization (STEP 1) > Find Affiliate Programs at Google (STEP 2) > exercise (STEP 3) Visit a site that appeals to you. If it has an affiliate program that fits your Site Concept, first enter what kind of merchandise it sells and then enter the URL of the “join page” into POSSIBLE PARTNERS for that keyword (as explained above). Check the top ten sites -- twenty if you are feeling ambitious -- and record those with potential.

Service Sellers Masters Course

Repeat the process for each keyword in your Master Keyword List (i.e., replace “exercise” with another keyword like “ab exercise”), starting with your specific high-profitability keywords and then following up with your general Concept Keywords (ex., “weight training” and other “concept-level” keywords that you develop, such as “exercise equipment,” etc.). Read the review of each potential match. Look at the ratings and take advantage of any evaluation services offered. You can also look for “cross-concept companies.” These are companies selling products that, because of their nature, fit with most or all Site Concepts. For example, whether your concept is about “Renaissance art” or “pricing” or “exercise,” you’ll find books about it. So always include a bookstore in your group of affiliate programs. Still in the searching mood after all that? Try this final suggestion… You already have a list of POSSIBLE PARTNERS. Use the search tool at AssociatePrograms to check out partners. Just enter each domain into the search tool. If you want to be really, really, really thorough, and you have more spare time than I do, you could check out these affiliate directories… Associate Programs http://www.associateprograms.com/ Refer-it http://www.refer-it.com/ 1webindex http://www.1webindex.com/ Our own affiliate program, the 5 Pillar Program, is consistently the #1 top-earning program of AssociatePrograms.com (the #1 affiliate directory). http://affiliates.sitesell.com/ Anyone who visits your site is bound to be curious how she found you, and how you did such a wonderful job. Since we are all about Net marketing and sales, our program fits anyone’s site.

Service Sellers Masters Course

4.1.4. Grow Through The ClickBank Network ClickBank, through its fast-growing Marketplace, gives you access to over 10,000 digital products and a commission range that extends as high as 75%. http://www.clickbank.com/ Its account setup is simple and free. And ClickBank’s tracking and payment procedures are reliable and accurate. The company manages the publisher (merchant) relationship so you always receive your payment. Use Search It! to find digital products and their affiliate programs.

4.1.5. Grow through Affiliate Backend Providers/Networks/Aggregators There are several companies that provide the tools, technology and services that online businesses need to register, track, report and pay affiliates. In other words, merchants don’t have to “do it themselves” because these companies provide all the backend functionality necessary to run an affiliate program. The “backend providers” prefer to call themselves “affiliate networks.” Why? Because they do more than just provide merchants with affiliate software. They also provide merchants with affiliates, and vice-versa. Since they have a pool of hundreds of thousands of affiliates, a merchant’s program gets instant exposure to potentially interested affiliates. And affiliates get exposure to a wide variety of merchants. So join each of these backend providers. You will likely come across many of the same merchants that you found in the affiliate directories. But you will also find new ones. So it is worth checking to see whether they feature any programs that fit with your concept.... Commission Junction http://www.cj.com/ LinkShare http://www.linkshare.com/ If you find merchants with products that fit, enter what kind of merchandise they sell and also enter the URL of the “join page” to the POSSIBLE PARTNERS column in your MASTER KEYWORD LIST for each keyword that is relevant. 56

Service Sellers Masters Course

4.1.6. Grow through Alexa Use Search It! to find potential affiliates through Alexa or Quantcast. Choose the Popularity search category. Alexa, for example, displays traffic ranking, in-pointing links, and even visitor reviews! Once you establish which sites in your niche are the big players, use the Related Links tool from Alexa to expand your horizons!

4.1.7. Grow Through Search Engines & Directories... Favorite Tricks Now for a quick peek at a couple of my favorite tricks... How else can you find merchants through the Search Engines? Easy!... 1) Visit the advertisers! 2) Sniff affiliate sites (They’ve already done the homework for you!)... These “linked-to” merchants already have affiliate programs -- all you have to do is check them out and see if they fit with your Site Concept! Add the ones that do fit with your list of POSSIBLE PARTNERS.

4.1.8. Grow Through Back Links Find other sites that link to a site with this query…. Search It! > Back Links (STEP 1) > To (sub) Domain from All Other Sites (STEP 2) Many of these sites will be content sites that also link to other exercise-related merchants as affiliates (you can often tell by the linking URLs). More than likely, these linked-to merchants already have affiliate programs -- all you have to do is check them out and see if they fit! Add the acceptable ones to your list of POSSIBLE PARTNERS for each keyword. And you can use this Search It! link-finder technique for all of your POSSIBLE PARTNERS for all of your keywords!

Service Sellers Masters Course

4.2. Reduce Risk by Diversifying One of the major attractions of becoming an affiliate is the small amount of risk involved. As an affiliate, you have little or no... • product development expenses • advertising costs • inventory to maintain • overhead expenses (salaries, physical location, etc.) In other words, affiliates do not have millions at stake. But you do have one big risk... If a merchant or backend provider goes out of business, it takes you with it. Let’s talk briefly about how to minimize this risk... After you review the affiliate directories and backend providers, you should have a good selection of programs. How many programs should you choose? How do you know which ones are solid? You don’t, really. Yes, you can weed out the dogs by doing the basic research outlined below. But most of us just don’t have the ability or time to thoroughly analyze a company, its financials, and its business model… and then predict success or failure. So your best bet is to spread your business among as many programs as possible that fit with your Site Concept. But there are some important qualifiers to this policy... 1) If you represent 10 programs, don’t put them all on the same KeywordFocused Content Page. Work in only the few that are tightly relevant to the content of each page. 2) Pick the best-of-breed from each category of merchant. For example, if you plan on representing a Net marketing company, SiteSell would be the obvious choice (ahem!). If you plan unusually heavy support for a given category of product, you might want to represent the best two merchants. For example, suppose you foresee hundreds of book links on your site. It might be a good idea to choose the best 2 online bookstores -- if Bookstore A and Bookstore B fit with your concept and both seem to be stable companies, then use these two. No more, though... 58

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3) Don’t choose too many programs. Tracking each program takes time, so 10 programs is probably a good balance. If any one of them dies, you don’t lose too much. 4) Your best results will come from focusing on a smaller group of quality programs (from within the 10). Their products must... • be excellent • be complementary with, even enhance, each other • fit your concept and... • be from a rock-solid company. Since you will give these companies more attention than the others, you must feel very comfortable with their business prospects. Here’s the bottom line... Don’t give too much emphasis to any single program, unless you have some special reason to feel unusually comfortable with it. Things happen. So protect yourself by choosing a variety of affiliate partners. Of course, you can also reduce your risk by weeding out the dogs through some basic research...

4.2.1. Prune by Eliminating High-Risk Programs Find the good programs and eliminate the dogs by considering the following plus signs, minus signs, and red flags. Let’s start with the plus signs, signified by +, which means “good things to look for.” Here they are, in the approximate order of importance... + High quality product or service -- Remember, it’s your reputation that is on the line (and online!). Don’t recommend products that UNDERdeliver. + Merchant has a good site that sells effectively.

Service Sellers Masters Course

+ Ability for affiliate to link straight to individual products, rather than just to the home page. (If the visitor has to find the product that you recommend, your Conversion Rate plummets.) + Type of payment model... Pay-per-sale and pay-per-lead are good. This is true “performance marketing.” If your referred visitor delivers the desired response, you get paid. What about “pay-per-click?” See red flags below. + Affiliate Support... • Accurate, reliable, real-time, online accounting, preferably with some kind of ability to “audit” by spot-checking • Detailed traffic and linking stats • Notification by e-mail when a sale is made • Useful marketing assistance -- provides traffic-building and sales-getting tools • High-quality newsletter that educates, trains, and accounts for amounts earned • Professional marketing materials available • Affiliates receive discounts on products Great affiliate support is important for a “between the lines” reason, too. It indicates a high degree of commitment to the program and its affiliates.

+ Pays good commission -- Hard goods have lower margins than digital ones so their commissions will be lower. Still, you should make at least 10% (hard goods) or 20% (digital goods) on any product that you recommend. Don’t be scared off by low-priced products if they offer a good % commission -- the lower dollar value per sale is offset by the higher sales volume. + Must be free (no charge) to join, no need to buy the product. + Lifetime commission -- If the program pays a commission on future sales of other products to customers that you refer, this is a huge plus. + Two-tier commission -- If the program pays a commission on affiliates who join because of you, this is also great. + Lifetime cookie -- Do you receive a commission if the person you referred returns and buys within one month? Three months? The cookie that tracks this should not expire. 60

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+ Restriction on number of affiliates -- You won’t find many of these. But if you do find one, grab it. + Monthly payment, with reasonable minimum. Do all those plus signs have to be present? No. But the more, the merrier. Minus signs are definite detractors. Naturally, if you are unable to give a + to any of the criteria listed just above, consider its absence to be a minus. And watch out for these negative factors... — Slow and/or poor support. — Unethical conduct of any kind. — Reports of late (or lack of) payments. — Allowing spam, or seeming to send spam themselves. — Defective affiliate-joining process. Hey, if they can’t get this right... — Clauses in the agreement that you find unacceptable. • Example -- If lifetime customers are important to you, then a clause that allows unilateral termination or modification of the agreement at any time by the company without just cause effectively makes the lifetime commitment of no value. • Example -- No exclusivity (i.e., you should be allowed to represent more than one book vendor). And perhaps the most worrisome factor of all… — “The dark side” of affiliate programs. Is the program really just a way to legally bribe folks to recommend overpriced, UNDERdelivering products in order to collect excessive commissions? There is a commission that is “just right” for each product. If the commission is too low, it is not interesting enough for affiliates. If it is too high, it’s a consumer rip-off. (Excessive commissions also push the price of the product up to levels that cannot survive for long in the competitive Net marketplace.) Your job as an affiliate is an important one. You deliver high-value content that gains the confidence and trust of your visitor/reader. You include recommendations and referrals to your new friends as part of your

Service Sellers Masters Course

service and content. Recommending anything less than sterling products is simply sophisticated, subtle fraud. Not the way to build up your primary service business. If you find products that fit your theme but that don’t deliver quality, sell the distributor advertising on your site. This way, you don’t compromise your ethics or your reputation because the customer recognizes advertising for what it is... a promotion. Nothing wrong with that at all, because her “guard is up.” Bottom line... Don’t allow yourself to be bribed into recommending such products -- in the long run, your reputation will be ruined. And so will your business. On the other hand, when your visitors are rewarded repeatedly by your rich recommendations, they will increasingly like you and respect your judgment and they'll keep coming back for more!

Red flags

are warning signs...

“Pay-per-click” method of payment. In this method, you get paid whenever a visitor clicks on your link. No purchase or lead-generation necessary. Unfortunately, it’s wide open for abuse -- very sophisticated folks create incentives to get thousands of people to click on their links. But the visitors could care less about the products being promoted. The scam is virtually unstoppable. And merchants end up paying for nothing. So merchants cancel or change the program. Microsoft’s Clicktrade used to offer pay-per-click backend programming for merchants. Microsoft dropped it due to the level of fraudulent activity that hurt merchants. In theory, pay-per-click affiliate programs are a good idea. Unfortunately, they attract “scam artist affiliates.” Sooner or later, merchants seem to throw in the towel against the onslaught. So be wary -- this kind of affiliate program tends to dissolve or mutate into a different model.

Multi-tier commission. This is online Multi-Level Marketing (MLM), which is perfectly legal. Do your due diligence to make sure, of course, that a multi-tier program is not an illegal pyramid scheme. If the “game” is to earn income by signing up others, you are most likely dealing with a pyramid. Many people confuse honest, legal MLM with dishonest, scammy pyramid schemes. With MLM (also known as Network Marketing), it becomes as important to build a strong downline as it does to sell product. Also, MLM companies are subject to 62

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numerous regulations (to prevent them from becoming pyramids, basically). Not all online companies are complying (or even know about this!). Watch for a big shakeout with many of these companies going belly-up. If multitier interests you, I would recommend that you check out established offline MLMs that are now online. Or... investigate all others extremely carefully before you decide to invest a lot of time in these. Poor or little info about affiliate program available. What kind of priority could it have? Dead links on merchant site. No clear anti-spamming policy visible on site. Site that promotes “get-rich-quick” gimmicks. Financially unstable. You can lose a lot of momentum if a company goes under, especially if you are banking on lifetime customer/2-tier promises.

4.2.2. How To Use Alexa.com To Get the Goods On Merchants If you haven’t used this strategy yet, now is a good time to use it. Alexa serves as a wonderful final check in two ways… 1) Its stats indicate how successful a program is. 2) The related links suggest good competing merchants. Check out SiteSell’s stats as a trial run… Search It! > Popularity (STEP 1) > Alexa Ranking (STEP 2) > sitesell.com (STEP 3)

Service Sellers Masters Course

4.2.3. Prune Possible Partners By PageRank Score Google uses the quality (and to some extent, the quantity) of in-pointing links as part of its measurement of the importance of a page. The higher the score, the more highly Google regards the page. A score of 5 or higher indicates a certain degree of success. Search It! > Popularity (STEP 1) > Google PageRank (STEP 2) > net2fitness.com (STEP 3) Well done! You've grown and pruned a list of affiliate programs for your Site Concept. This will give you an additional income stream. Following the principle of using more than one basket for your eggs, you have spread your programs among several merchants. Now you want to diversify further and take full advantage of what the Web has to offer, so you will investigate other potential income streams…

4.3. Check Out Other Monetization Models Your Most Wanted Response is to have your visitor contract your service. But what if your visitor doesn't need your assistance today? Instead, she notices another one of your offerings. This is good for her, and good for you… WIN-WIN. Your visitor is happy and your Web site is steadily bringing you a stable income. Start now. Investigate and plan your site's monetization models. Take a week, if necessary -- money is involved! Even though “CTP” is first and “M” comes last, you do have to plan the “M” now. Why? Because if you don’t investigate and plan “M” now, it would be depressing to find out that your particular Site Concept has very little “monetize-ability” after you’ve spent months building informative, creative Content! Also, you may adjust the Site Concept, fine-tune its approach, according to the Monetization Mix you develop now. Summary: Plan “M” now. Fulfill it later.

Your two basic goals are... 64

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1) Investigate and assure yourself that this Site Concept can indeed make substantial profits. Of course, not every monetization model has to start immediately. But the potential must be there! 2) Lay out your plan for the monetization mix. Start with your primary income stream, your service.

Build a client base, locally and/or globally as Nick and Nadir demonstrate… http://case-studies.sitesell.com/#SERVICES Marc and Richard hung out their Webmaster shingles… http://case-studies.sitesell.com/#PROS How and when will you lay out your options? Let’s do a quick overview of some possibilities… • Google’s AdSense Program -- AdSense is tailor-made for Theme-Based Content Sites. Combine participation in the AdSense Program with membership in two or three quality affiliate programs and you have a solid monetization base in place. How does AdSense work? Upon acceptance in the program, Google selects relevant ads for you to place on your Web pages. You are paid for every ad clicked upon. http://adsense.sitesell.com/ See how Michelle monetizes using AdSense on her site… http://case-studies.sitesell.com/#WAHM • Referral/Finders’ Fees -- With this model, you send visitors to specific businesses (offline businesses, especially) and get paid for the lead or sale that results. Nori explains how she earns income through referrals… http://case-studies.sitesell.com/#FINDERS • Net Auction Selling -- Auction products (hard or digital goods or services) that relate to your theme. Put eBay to work for you. 65

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Merle and Pam use their site to funnel prospective clients to their eBay auctions… http://case-studies.sitesell.com/#AUCTION • E-good Creation/Sellers -- Almost anything can be digitized and sold… ebooks, photos, software. Shaun and Marney show you how… http://case-studies.sitesell.com/#EGOODS • Network Marketing -- Use the networking power of the Web to generate warm, willing-and-wanting-to-talk-to-you prospects... people who will call you, not the other way around. Jim and Sara use their sites to extend their “warm circles of friends”… http://case-studies.sitesell.com/#MLM • Online store -- Sell hard goods that are related to your theme as Jim and Richard do… http://case-studies.sitesell.com/#HARDGOODS • Local Business -- Increase your local reputation and expand your client base. Let John and Judd tell you about their successes… http://case-studies.sitesell.com/#LOCAL Bottom line? Always follow this strategy… If you don’t monetize a visitor one way, convert her into dollars another way! The more you diversify, the more stable and sustainable your business will be. And that brings us to an important decision you need to make…

Service Sellers Masters Course

4.4. To LOOP, Or Not To LOOP? That Is The Question Almost done! You’ve checked the programs in a number of different ways using Search It! as your “private investigator.” By considering the plus signs, the minus signs, and the red flags, you’ve eliminated the high-risk dogs that don’t deserve your time. And you’ve researched each POSSIBLE PARTNER for each of your keywords. You have gone even further and investigated some other models of monetization M. Finalize your selection of affiliate programs and other income streams. If you don’t find enough good programs, you may have to broaden your concept or even replace it. Or you may want to simply focus on PREselling/selling your own service! Do not, I repeat do not, feel that you must have your entire business worked out “to the nth degree” by working on DAYS 3 and 4 forever. I don’t need to remind you that Rome was not built in a day, do I? With that perspective in mind, please allow me to remind you of a small-business truism. The two biggest mistakes any entrepreneur makes are actually opposites of each other... 1) FIRE-READY-AIM -- the person who leaps before he looks. If this fits you, I can only repeat Ben Franklin’s quote... “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

In other words... ignore the preparation work at your peril. 2) READY-AIM-READY-AIM-READY-AIM -- the person who researches, then researches some more, then some more. For this person, I can only offer this profound wisdom... Fish or cut bait.

Or, as Nike would say... Just do it!

In other words... Don’t get stuck “perfecting” DAYS 3 and 4. 67

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So... if you have isolated a good theme for your service, picked your highestprofitability topics, selected excellent merchant-partners that you are proud to represent, and if you have considered other potential monetization models, then you are ready to roar ahead. Time for me to hop off the old podium and remind you… Before proceeding to DAY 5, please complete your DAY 4 Goal-of-the-DAY, and take note of your Ongoing Goal… Find, research, and select more POSSIBLE PARTNERS. Rotate the technique used (i.e., Search It!, Backend Providers, etc.). Continue to make monetization choices on the basis of fit and excellence.

Are you ready for the next step? Geez, what a question! After all that preparation, you’re super-ready!…

Service Sellers Masters Course

5. DAY 5 Refine And Register Your Domain A rose by any other name Would smell the same... But not a domain! Goal-of-the-DAY... Narrow or broaden your service’s theme/concept until it is, to quote Goldilocks, “Just right.” Narrow to the point that it still offers plenty of opportunities for profit (narrow your niche too much and your market will disappear), but not so broad as to dilute your VPP (Valuable PREselling Proposition)… what sets you apart from your competition. Before you register your domain, check out Site Build It!... http://buildit.sitesell.com/ It eliminates the tedious and the complicated parts of this Masters course. And SBI! will register your domain name with the click of a button.

5.1. Refine Your Site Concept It’s time to do some rigorous evaluating of the info you’ve collected in your Master Keyword List and to make any adjustments to your Site Concept. Your “title” as a service seller (for example, “personal trainer") provided a starting point for the development of your site’s theme. However, as you worked your way through DAYS 2, 3, and 4, you built your Master Keyword List for a “fitness and exercise” Site Concept. This list is literally your site blueprint that… • shows you SUPPLY and DEMAND data -- best idea is to start writing pages about words with the best numbers for PROFITABILITY • contains SUPPLY SITE INFO... information about sites that rank well • suggests POSSIBLE PARTNERS, merchants with affiliate programs that you would be proud to represent • gives you IDEAS FOR CONTENT -- possible topics for you to write about. Now, is that a blueprint, or what?

Service Sellers Masters Course

Let’s use the info in your Master Keyword List to refine your concept. Here are the factors to consider before finalizing your Site Concept... 1) Broad or narrow-niche? Perhaps “exercise” is just too broad, too open-ended. After all, can a single person ever “fill” a site about “exercise”? 2) If you choose to go narrow, which niche do you select? Don’t paint yourself into a corner. Choose a niche that you can broaden. Remember the future -you can always broaden your concept if you “fill” your niche. 3) Are you staying close to your service, your passion and knowledge? You’ll be much more effective if you stick to what you know and love. 4) How much time are you prepared to spend? If time is a limiting factor, stay narrow. 5) What’s the profitability level? Review your SUPPLY and DEMAND data. Although you have to stick close to your Site Concept, focus on the most profitable options. 6) Read what others are writing about in your field, and review your own ideas. Do you want to cover similar topics (nothing wrong with that, especially if you do it better!), or do you see a niche or approach that has not yet been done? 7) How many solid affiliate programs are good fits? 8) Does the concept have Search Engine “Winnability”? Two points here... i) It’s hard to win a “Top 10” ranking in search results for broad-concept keywords like “exercise”. ii) As we’ll see later, the Search Engines will be concentrating more and more on the theme of the overall site. So if you choose to develop a broad concept like exercise, with several major sub-themes (aerobics, weight lifting, etc.), it will be harder to win the war for the sub-themes than if you dedicated a single site to a sub-theme. In other words... the “nichier,” the better. 9) How many keywords did you find? If you used all three WINDOWS (SUPPLY, DEMAND, and BREAKOUT) to their full potential, you should have no shortage of high-profitability keywords. But if your topic is just too narrow, you may need to broaden the concept somewhat if you intend to leverage that second income stream. 10) Will broadening your niche attract people who, for the most part, will not be interested in your service? If that is the probable outcome, can you convert this

Service Sellers Masters Course

traffic into an additional revenue stream by PREselling a merchant partner’s products or your own e-good? If that’s not feasible, then stay narrow. And consider one more factor... Can parts of your theme be turned into e-goods (ex., e-books, collections of e-photos, etc.) for you to sell directly from your site?... A 3rd income stream! Your own e-good? Why not? Simply match your product with your service... • corporate/tax expert in Anguilla -- provide e-books as well as your highend services (sold after several exposures to you via your e-zine). • plastic surgery consultant -- sort out the good from the bad. Provide independent analysis. • home schooling expertise -- sell some e-books and your services to those seeking help here. • time management skills for moms of newborns • foreign students in Canada – an “insider’s” e-pamphlet and your services are just what a lot of young people seek. Infoproducts, tutorials, fiction, poetry, photo collections, music -- if you can digitalize it, you can sell it with Site Build It!. http://egoods.sitesell.com/ SBI! is fully compatible with many of the popular Plug 'n Play services available (ClickBank, PayPal, Digibuy, etc).

So how broad should your Site Concept be? The single best recommendation... *************************************** As narrow as possible, yet... ... still with lots of profit potential!

*************************************************** Yes, I do want to have my cake and eat it, too. Seriously, every success story starts small, and then builds. And if you’re like most people, you don’t have the time to flesh out a huge concept all at once. And it will actually hurt you at the engines if your concept is too broad. Better to start narrow, but with enough profit potential (as determined by considering the above factors) and then grow the concept.

Service Sellers Masters Course

Let’s start with one of our earlier examples (a pricing consultant) to illustrate how to finalize a Site Concept. We’ll also develop your domain name at the same time, since the two go hand-in-hand. First things first…

5.2. Develop Your VPP Ideally, your domain should reflect your Valuable PREselling Proposition (VPP). Your VPP answers, in very few words and hopefully with just a touch of character, the two critical questions about your Site Concept... 1) What specific and high-value information does your site deliver? 2) What is your unique positioning for this delivery (i.e., what is your angle of approach)? A good VPP transmits these answers loud and clear to your visitor so that she immediately understands what your site is about. And the single best way to do that?... Include your VPP in your domain name! Now let’s develop your service, and your Concept Keyword into a VPP. That is your service’s most powerful benefit, in combination with a strong, unique feature of your business. It answers that most difficult question... why should potential customers hire your service company? Here’s how to develop your VPP... 1) What service are you selling? Write down what your service provides. 2) What is the key benefit(s) to your customer? What pain does it cure, what solution does it provide? 3) What is unique about your service? What is unique about you? What makes you stand out from the competition? Keep working on this until you can clearly separate yourself from the field. There must be a convincing reason for doing business with you, instead of your competitor. 4) Summarize the above into one tight, powerful, motivating phrase that will persuade your customer to do business with you... to trade her money for the benefits delivered by your service. 72

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As you start to work through the above four steps, you may find this to be a lot harder than it looks. Don’t blow it off and give up! You must have a VPP. If it was easy, everyone would have a great VPP! Come up with a tight, sharp one that PREsells your service to your customer. There’s a second benefit to this exercise. It will crystallize your own vision of what you do! Write your VPP down. Keep it firmly fixed in your mind. Here’s a nice little technique that may help you. Ask yourself this question... “If I could grant my visitor the biggest benefit, what would it be?” A good VPP transmits your uniqueness loud and clear to your visitor in a very few words. Why does this need to be stated in “very few words”? One big reason... The K-I-S-S (Keep-It-Simple-Stupid) principle. When a reader hits your site, she must easily/immediately be able to understand what your site is all about. And the single best way to do that?... Include your VPP in your domain name! Yes, your VPP should be your domain name! There’s no room for “cleverness” or subtlety here. Leave that to the moneylosing dotcoms. If at all possible, include your service's Concept Keyword in your VPP and add a “marketing angle/theme” to it. That way, your concept is clear to your visitor, and to the Search Engines (the engines will rank your site a touch higher for your Concept Keyword if it is included in your domain name). Focus your efforts on developing a VPP that is “not too narrow, not too broad” -- it needs to be just right. Would some examples help to clarify?

5.2.1. Example 1 -- A Tight Niche “Pricing” is a nice, tight concept. You can use your SUPPLY and DEMAND WINDOWS to brainstorm many high-profitability keywords that are directly related to pricing. And, as we saw, you can also BREAKOUT into other areas, too... areas that would be of interest to serious business people (ex., “fulfillment” or “copywriting” or “product development”). Here’s the problem, though... if you developed many Keyword-Focused Content Pages about fulfillment within your pricing site, you’d dilute that site’s Search 73

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Engine effectiveness for pricing issues. So “concept-level” keywords like “fulfillment” really deserve their own sites. Keep your theme pure. You will do better with the engines and you will be more credible to your readers, too. Business people who are interested in fulfillment will also be interested in pricing. Well, the reverse is true, also. So your pricing pages can also refer people to a good fulfillment company... not to mention a company with a good solution for customer support! Since “pricing” is wide enough to be profitable and narrow enough to be winnable, make “pricing” your Site Concept Keyword for your new Theme-Based Content Site. Now let’s develop your “pricing” Concept Keyword into a Valuable PREselling Proposition (VPP). We’ll explore two different directions… i) pricingadvisor.com, or THEpricingadvisor.com VPP = pricing advisor. This says that you are delivering pricing information. (Your Concept Keyword must, of course, be included in your domain.) And the "advisor" part establishes you as the expert -- it tells your visitor that you'll be delivering some great pricing advice! ii) pricing-on-the-net.com VPP = pricing on the Net. Again, it’s clear that you are delivering pricing info. The “on the Net” part says that you are specializing in pricing info specifically on the Internet. Since there is not much info about pricing on the Net and since your potential visitor is certainly there looking for Net-specific info, this is a good approach. Same idea for “netpricing.com” and “cyberpricing.com.” When do you use dashes in your domain name? If both versions of a 3-or-more-word domain are available, use dashes if it helps readability. For example, which is easier to read?... pricing-on-the-net.com or... pricingonthenet.com Generally, do not use dashes if your domain name has only two words in it. See how “netpricing.com” and “cyberpricing.com” don’t really need the help of a dash?

Service Sellers Masters Course

Do use dashes (even if the domain has only two words) when the nondash version is not available. But be sure that you are not violating anyone’s trademark. NOTE: If your business is offline, the dash issue is important to consider (i.e., telling people how to spell it, people forgetting to put the dash after reading your print ad, etc.). Here’s the bottom line... domain names are so cheap that it’s a good idea to take both versions (with and without the dash), just to make sure that a competitor does not take names that could be confused with yours. SBI! owners and 5 Pillar Affiliates can park domain names through Name Park It!. Its $9.95 per-domain fee includes domain-redirects and unlimited subdomain-redirects. No additional purchase or hosting required. And it’s the perfect way to hide any long and ugly affiliate link from any program! Name Park It! is not available to the general public. If you are interested, all you have to do is join the 5 Pillar Program… http://affiliates.sitesell.com/ You are under no obligation to promote SBI! or our other free products.

Bottom line? Same Concept Keyword, but two different VPPs that outline two different Site Concepts. Which of the above approaches is best? Ahhh... my work is done. You know your prospective visitor best. Which approach do you think works best?

5.2.2. Example 2 -- A Bit Too Narrow You may have discovered during the course of your research that there doesn’t appear to be enough high-profitability keywords and related potential partners. That’s OK, of course. The main focus of your site is selling your service. Affiliate programs are only supposed to represent an auxiliary income stream. Rest assured, the success of your service business is not solely reliant on a large number of available partners. What should you do? You have three options...

Service Sellers Masters Course

OPTION 1) Expand the concept. Make it more general. But remember... you don’t have to start huge. Build it over time. And try not to compromise the selling of your service over this. Be wary of broadening the theme of your site too much. Try not to dilute your service’s targeted niche simply to expand your base of merchant partners. Focus on selling your service. That’s where the “meat and potatoes” of your business will come from. Everything else? Well, it’s just gravy!

OPTION 2) Loop back to DAY 2 and try the next concept on your DAY 2 “short list” of Site Concepts. OPTION 3) Recognize the benefits of an online presence for your service business (credibility, trust, and accessibility), in and of itself. The return generated by a single new customer is substantial, and even more so if she becomes a lifetime supporter. Lots of great keyword opportunities and lots of excellent merchant partners are fantastic bonuses but not essential. OPTIONS 2 and 3 are fairly straightforward so let’s begin examining OPTION 1. First, though, put on your “personal trainer’s” hat and think “healthy”... Use the BREAKOUT window to expand your Site Concept, or even to find a new, better direction. The expansion route may seem perfectly obvious to you, even without doing the BREAKOUT brainstorming. Think about it and ask yourself more expansive questions each time... Do I stop at abdominal exercises? Or do I grow my idea to include abdominal exercises and lower back exercises? Or do I grow it into a comprehensive exercise portal?... Which level should my starting Service Site Concept reflect? Keep doing DAYS 2 and 3 on progressively broader concepts until you find enough profit potential to proceed. How broad should you go? Remember the single best recommendation... *************************************************** As narrow as possible, yet... ... still with lots of profit potential! ***************************************************

In other words, work your way up from exercise, to “abdominal exercise,” to “abdominal exercise and lower back exercise,” to “everything exercise.” Stop as soon as you find a level that has solid profit potential. Keep your niche as narrow 76

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as possible, so that you can build a site “to fill that glass,” yet still make good profits. Nowadays, I would not start “exercise.com” as a global exercise portal. First of all, I’d go nuts trying to fill this wonderful site with so much info. And it would look rather amateurish with just a little content. More importantly, though, is that each section would dilute the other. For example, since Search Engines will increasingly evaluate the overall theme of an entire site, my abdominal exercise section will dilute my aerobic activities section, etc., etc. And anyone who puts up a site that focuses purely on the theme of “abdominal exercise” will have an edge over that section of my mega-site. You could go with one of the following VPP-within-a-domain names... “THE-abdominal-trainer.com” Or... “Personal-ab-trainer.com” Or... “Abdominal-personal-trainer.com” These are all smart, but not too clever (i.e., so subtle that many visitors would miss the point). They tell the visitor immediately and clearly what you do and what your site is about. The second and third highlight your service as a “personal trainer,” as well as your specific exercise-related niche “abdominals” and “abs”. Bottom line? Visitors know right off what to expect. And that’s the name of the game. The only strategy on this over-congested Net is to target a specific niche with a specific Site Concept and a strong VPP that tells people quickly what specific and high-value information you are delivering. When you start with a wide-open concept like “exercise,” you have two basic choices... 1) Narrow down to a “exercise-containing” Site Concept that fits hand-in-hand with your service.

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2) Change course somewhat, if necessary, based on your BREAKOUT research in WINDOW 3. (In fact, while you'll start with one or the other, you will quickly end up using both choices). Let’s use these examples to illustrate… • inner thigh exercise • lower abdominal exercise • lower back exercise Narrow your choice to “lower back exercise” and do some BREAKOUT research for that word. You decide that this is your Site Concept. With your mind made up, you register your domain name as... the-lower-back-exercise-trainer.com As you can see, the domain name contains your VPP. Yes, I agree. The name is not particularly clever. But this domain name gives you a better edge with the Search Engines, for two reasons... 1) There’s a slight advantage to having your keyword within the domain name. But more importantly... 2) You’ll be using your name over and over in your copy. This also increases the chances you’ll be found for your main keyword phrase, as well as emphasizing the legitimacy of your theme with the SEs. Add a byline like... “The Lower Back Exercise Trainer... Personal Training for Your Lower Back!”

... and include it on every page, and under your logo. You’re off and running with a great concept like this. Just one more thought... Let’s say that the-lower-back-exercise-trainer.com site flourishes. (Hey, it should! You’re doing everything right.) It will be too late to register related domains later. So do it now, with an eye to expanding your concept in a few months... • the-abdominal-trainer.com • abdominal-exercise-products.com (your future store?) 78

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• the-inner-thigh-trainer.com • And, of course, tie it up all together with a master domain, personal-exercisetrainer.com or THE-personal-exercise-trainer.com. This master site will be launched once your other sites are all up and running!

5.2.3. Example 3 -- A Bit Too Broad Let’s discuss Choice #2 (from above) when dealing with a wide-open General Keyword like “exercise.” Change course somewhat, if necessary, based on your BREAKOUT research in WINDOW 3. Research like this may even point you towards changing your concept away from the “concept-level” keyword of “exercise.” You might decide to focus on more specific terms such as “weight training,” “stress management exercise” and so on. Of course, you also have to… • consider whether this different direction excites you as much, and “fits” as nicely with your service. • think about the kind of customer who will search for your keywords. Make sure that you aren't marketing to a personality type that is hard to convert, no matter what you do (ex., the “freebie-seeking tire-kicker” or the “marketing-phobic techtype”). You want to attract a personality that is open-to-hire. In other words, you want people who will either hire you, or buy something from your merchant partners after reading your excellent content. Three approaches, three examples. Here’s the whole point of DAY 5... Take your time on the concept and the domain name -- the choice you make here will literally make or break your online success results. Remember what Danny De Vito said in “The Renaissance Man”... *************************************************** “The choices we make dictate the lives we lead.”

*************************************************** Your service… topics you know and love... combine to present you with excellent profitability!

Service Sellers Masters Course

If I had to summarize the entire Service Sellers Masters Course into just two lines, it would be the two you just read... *************************************************** Your service… topics you know and love… combine to present you with excellent profitability! ***************************************************

You believe you have the right domain name, but wait… Don’t rush out to register it just yet. Your domain name will be with you a long, long time, showing potential visitors just what you have to offer. Take one more step before you make the final decision…

5.3. Refine Your Domain Name A good domain name is... • short and sharp • meaningful -- conveys a clear message • easy to spell • easy to remember • unique, descriptive, and “you” • solid, classic, not hokey In general, if you follow the above guideline for creating your VPP, you won’t need much help coming up with a great domain name. But if you really want to make sure that you've left no cyber-stone unturned, Search It! can help you. We’ll be using our first example where the keyword is “pricing.” The second keyword reflects our VPP, in this case, “advisor.” Ready to go? Open Search It! and take the following pathway… Search It! > Domain Names (STEP 1) > DomainBots Domain Namer (STEP 2) > pricing (STEP 3) > advisor (STEP 4) Special note… do not register your domain at any of these services until you’ve seen your “very best” below.

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A good domain name ends in “.com,” “.net” or “.org.” These are well established, unlike some new entities -- “.tv” for example. When you are developing your domain name, think about your visitor’s mindset. Which name has the most credibility? What about using a country ending like “.ca” or “.com.au”? Even if yours is a local business, you will sound more impressive with a .com/.net./.org ending. And your local business could easily add global income once your site is up and running. I highly recommend “.com” as your first choice. If you are the personal trainer and you already have an idea for a great name and just want to check to see if it’s been taken... Use Search It! again… Search It! > Domain Names (STEP 1) > Check Domain Availability (STEP 2) > personal-ab-trainer.com (STEP 3) Don’t register your domain yourself. If you use Site Build It!, domain registration is included your subscription.

Got a great and available name? Super! Now check for trademarks... Search It! > Site Legalities (STEP 1) > Trademark Check -- US (STEP 2) > personal-ab-trainer.com (STEP 3) Search It! makes the trademark searches easy to do from Site Legalities. So be sure to check the other countries, too. Your service business could be world wide once you are on the Web. You don’t want to run into legal problems anywhere. Please note… It’s not necessary to trademark your domain. But do make sure that you don’t violate someone else's mark before you register your domain. It would be a shame to build up a great business and then have someone who owned a trademark (before you registered your domain) force you to take it down. Registering domains is cheap. Why not lock them all in right now? That way, your expansion path won’t have potholes when the time comes for you to grow. Next? Registration… To register your domain name, you need the services of a registrar. There are zillions of them. If you are using one that makes you happy, stick with it. 81

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Otherwise, check out... http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html By the way, Site Build It! automatically takes care of domain name registration for you. The cost is included in the annual subscription fee. So your very best bet is simply to let us take care of it at the time you start “building income through content” with Site Build It!. Congratulations! Before proceeding to DAY 6, please complete your DAY 5 Goal-of-the-DAY, and take note of your Ongoing Goal... Now that you have found your perfect, “just right” Site Concept, consider the bigger picture. When you “finish” this, your first site, will you broaden the concept until you have your own mini-portal? Or will you start a second, unrelated site? All the necessary prep work is finished. You finalized and registered your domain. Get ready to build your site. We’re going back to Content C , where it all begins…

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6. DAY 6 Build A Site That Gets The Click! Rome.com was NOT built in a day! Yes, finally! We’re ready to start building! Let’s just take a look back at what we’ve done… • • • • •

examined PREselling and its effect on Conversion Rates (DAY 1) identified a potential niche concept (DAY 2) brainstormed a list of profitable keywords (DAY 3) researched quality affiliate programs and other income streams (DAY 4). chosen a domain name that reflects your VPP (DAY 5).

Impressive work! You truly do have a rock-solid foundation to build upon. During DAY 6, you will create a structure for your site. This is where you start the exciting C T P M snowball rolling by writing content designed to “get the click!” Let the construction begin! Goal-of-the-DAY... Build a home page, and one TIER 2 Keyword-Focused Content Page. Don’t know HTML? Intimidated by FTP and other Web technologies? Relax. Site Build It!'s “through-the-browser” site-building tools can help both the seasoned pro and the complete “newbie” build a vibrant and profitable online business easily! SBI! makes the technology invisible so you can focus on building your business! New features are constantly being added to SBI! at no added price... http://compare.sitesell.com/

6.1. Follow the Winning Formula Showtime! Like any great show, whether it’s baseball, or the theatre, or the Olympics, a successful outcome is all about preparation. And boy, have you prepared! And all that preparation has convinced you that your show should be... the-abdominal-trainer.com 83

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Yes! What started out as an exercise themed site designed to sell your personal training service has turned into a site all about abdominal exercise. And you have the body (a rock-solid, flat belly) to prove your expertise! While you love the idea, money talked, too. Search It! indicated a good Demand: Supply ratio (i.e., profitability). Your methodical research has uncovered a high-potential business!

Now it’s time to build income through content (i.e., to build a site that “gets the click.”) Since I’m still in “2-line-summary mode,” let’s boil down the essence of “building income through content”... *************************************************** Deliver valuable content to your readers... ... AND tasty content to your spiders. ***************************************************

Your site must be a WIN-WIN-WIN-WIN proposition for four parties... 1) your visitor 2) the Search Engines 3) your merchants, and... 4) YOU! Let’s look at each WIN...

6.1.1. Your Visitor Wins Your visitor must get what she is looking for -- outstanding information. OVERdeliver with original, high-value info. If you don’t do this, she simply clicks the BACK button to the Search Engine and says... “Next!”

6.1.2. The Search Engines Win The Search Engines are in business. Their product is the quality of their search results. Help them make their product better, and they’ll love you. Search Engines use computer programs called spiders to go out and bring your site back to its home (i.e., the Search Engine’s database). Then when someone 84

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looks up, let’s say “lower abdominal exercise,” another program decides whether your site or a site with a similar theme is more relevant. You must honestly convince each Search Engine that you are the most relevant (at least in the Top 20 search results, preferably in the Top 10) for the keywords that you target. Trick the engine and your success won’t last long. When the Search Engine discovers your game, it will ban you. Why? Tricks hurt a Search Engine’s product instead of helping it. Help the searcher -- your potential visitor and your merchant’s potential customer. Solve her problem or her quest. Satisfy the whole reason why she is doing the search. Do this and you add value to the Search Engine’s product. Use this approach and you will never have to worry about the Search Engines. They become partners with you in an effort to deliver quality content to searchers. And that means… • No tricks in comment tags or invisible links. • No fear about the SEs banning you because of your “tactics.” • No worrying about using your keywords in the right place/amount. • No wasting time, and trying to “stay on the cutting edge” ahead. • No 8 versions of the same site, one for each major engine. • No off-target keywords to suck in untargeted customers. (“Hey, this site’s not about Donald Trump! What gives?”) • No competitors will complain about your tricky methods. • No multiple domains, hidden inter-linking, etc. There’s simply nothing to fret about. Sleep well and enjoy solid, stable results by doing everything right the first time with the right process… C

Keep your focus on creating one “best fit” site which scores well with most of the engines for most of your words most of the time. Write your page for the customer, first and foremost. No games.

OK, on to the third win of WIN-WIN-WIN-WIN...

6.1.3. Your Merchants Win Your merchants want sales. As we have seen, the best way to deliver that is

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through outstanding content that gains your visitor’s confidence and increases your credibility. Then use “in-context” text links to refer/recommend/direct those visitors to places that you believe will deliver great value.

6.1.4. You Win YOU must win, too, of course. How? Ah, that’s the easiest part. If you get the first three WINS right, you will succeed. Think about it... OVERdelivery to your visitor ensures repeat visits, confidence and ongoing sales. The Search Engines will never ban you. And, as you become a superaffiliate, your merchants will pay you more and more, perhaps even giving you special bonuses and deals! I call the road to your WIN this special name...

6.1.5. FIND-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-KACHING Follow the sign-posts along this winning road… 1) FIND -- Your potential visitor must find you in the Top 10 (no worse than top 20) of the search results for your keyword. If your potential customer does not find you on the first or second page of the Search Engine’s search for your keyword, well, you simply don’t exist for that word. Game over. 2) CLICK -- Your potential visitor must read the “Title and Description” that the engine uses in the search results, and must find them sufficiently compelling to click to your site. If your Title and Description are boring or tacky, your potential visitor will probably not click to your KFCP (Keyword-Focused Content Page). Game over. 3) CLICK -- Your visitor finds high-value content, learns to trust you as someone honest who delivers, and so follows your recommendations... CLICK again! If your page delivers poor, low-value info (or even worse, a sales pitch), you still get the click... on the Back Button to the Search Engine’s results page. “Who’s next?” 86

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Game over. 4) CLICK-kaCHING -- Finally, your visitor arrives at your merchant in a “feeling smart about myself” and open-to-buy mood, ready to click that buy button! Did I just hear a cash register?... kaCHING! Ahhh... if you get the FIND-CLICKCLICK right, that last CLICK-kaCHING is almost in the bag! FIND-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-kaCHING... To accomplish that, all you have to do is... Get the first three WINS right. The fourth WIN, your WIN, follows automatically. And all you have to do to nail down those first three WINS is... *************************************************** Deliver valuable content to your readers... ... AND tasty content to your spiders. ***************************************************

OK. Let’s start with the physical layout of your new site...

6.2. Think “Pyramid” For Your Site Your Theme-Based Content Site is made of a home page that gives the “what's in it for me” about your site. It elaborates on the VPP (Valuable PREselling Proposition) and delivers the major benefit statements (more on contentbuilding in the next section). Think of your site as a pyramid…

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Now for the details…

6.2.1. The Structure of Your Site As A Pyramid The home page crowns the pinnacle. It’s a Keyword-Focused Content Page (KFCP) that focuses on your Site Concept keyword. Your home page should never link out of your site -- it’s too early. (The only possible exception would be for Google ads.) Its job instead is to link to 5-15 KFCPs that you expect to be most profitable. It must get the click to at least one of these pages. This is important for two reasons... 1) Your visitor hits a “money page” -- Your most profitable Keyword-Focused Content Pages weave “in-context” text links to your service-selling page and merchant-partners while OVERdelivering great content. This is how you make your income, so you want to lead your visitors to your highest potential pages ASAP. 2) Your spider-buddy follows the links and indexes (i.e., brings back to the Search Engine’s database) your most important pages first, and most reliably… the deeper a spider has to go, the more likely it is that he misses and fails to bring your bacon back to his database home. So we want to structure the site so that your most valuable pages have the best chance of being dragged back to all those spiders’ homes. These 5-15 pages are called TIER 2 pages because they are on the second TIER below the home page. Each TIER 2 page should… • focus on a keyword that has a high profitability score • fit with your best monetization opportunities • be a good “hub” page. Links on TIER 2 pages can go in four different directions... 1) Links Down Link to related TIER 3 pages. Each TIER 3 page should be related to or a subdivision of its TIER 2 (ex., “Diets” TIER 2 links to a variety of individual programs, each of which is a TIER 3). Again, the more good content 88

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you have, the more favorably you are viewed by humans and SE spiders. And the bulk of your content will be, should be, TIER 3. 2) Links Up Link back up to the home page. This provides both the human visitor and the SE spider with added value. Every TIER 2 should have the above two types of text links. The next two are optional, according to circumstances... 3) Links To Money Link to a monetization option (i.e., where you make money). For example, this could be as simple as placing a contact form on a TIER 2 page (for a follow-up phone call). You could also add Google AdSense ads on another TIER 2 page and/or blend in-context text links to ClickBank affiliate merchant-partners into the content. 4) Links Out Link to outstanding, related, non-competing content authorities in your niche. These non-affiliate links provide you extra credibility as a true content site in the eyes of editors from directories (like Yahoo!), reviewers from Google AdSense, and even with the engines. Don't use many of them, though. Convert as much of your traffic into income as possible. And do make these links pop up into a new window so that you don't lose your visitor completely. TIER 3 pages are KFCPs, too. A TIER 3 page fits as a sub-category, or a subthought, of its connecting TIER 2 page. The topic of each should relate to the topic of the TIER 2 page that links to it. TIER 3 pages may not be as profitable as the TIER 2 page that linked to them, but there are a whole heck of a lot more of them. Create enough of these and the traffic adds up pretty fast, thanks to geometric progression (i.e., 1 x 15 x 15). In other words, TIER 3 pages “make it up on volume.” OK. Time to use all of your previous research… Review your Master Keyword List and select your seven best keywords. (Select on the basis of profitability and fit.) You will link your home page to these seven, both within the body copy, as you outline what the site is all about, and from within a text or graphic navigation bar (navbar). You likely won’t pick the absolute 7 highest potential keywords. Some will be too close in meaning. Others may not easily lead to a TIER 3, as we’ll see in a second. So you pick the 7 that make the most sense and help to form the strongest site overall.

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Each TIER 3 page should relate to the TIER 2 page that links to it. For example, let’s say that “outlet malls” is one of the most profitable keywords that your research has found. What do you do? Create a TIER 2 Page (“best-abdominal-exercises.html”) called... “The Best Abdominal Exercises to Build Strength and Flexibility”

This page links to TIER 3 pages... • a page that discusses the merit of the exercise ball • a page that rates the top abdominal exercise machines price-wise • a page that lists the best online places to buy ab exercise equipment Here’s a key point about TIER 3... Your main TIER 3 keyword might not be so profitable. There may not be much demand for “ab exercise equipment.” However, the TIER 3 pages work together to generate traffic. The combined content of your site is what makes the biggest impact on your visitors. The formula is the same... OVERdeliver great content. Then “get the click” to your merchant partners. FIND-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-kaCHING! So, your TIER 1 home page links to 5-15 TIER 2 pages. And your TIER 2 pages each link to TIER 3 pages, back to the home page, and to TIER 2 pages where appropriate.

Service Sellers Masters Course

This clean, 3-TIER approach yields an easy, navigable site... for both your visitor and your spiders. Spiders always come in through the front door, as long as you submit the home page to them. (More details on SE submission later). From there, you’ve left a nice trail to follow so they can easily index the rest of your pages. Humans, however... They may find any page, TIER 1, 2, or 3, via the engines. So each TIER 3 page should provide a link back to its related TIER 2 page. And the same goes for TIER 2 to TIER 1 pages. Otherwise, keep internal linking only to what’s really necessary and relevant. Remember that your real goal is for your visitor to click to your merchants or your other income-generating source. After 3 TIERS and 50-70 pages, it gets tougher to get pages indexed. By this time, however, you should pretty much own this little niche. And your time will yield greater returns if you set up your next niche site. For example... the-lower-back-trainer.com Remember, each niche stands on its own. For example… • the-lower-back-trainer.com • the-abdominal-trainer.com • the-weight-trainer.com But once you have three niches established, there’s one more TIER, above all the other ones. Let’s call it TIER ZERO... • the-personal-exercise-trainer.com This “super home page” links to all the other home pages and again, delivers the VPP and major benefits of your mini-portal.

As the spiders gather up your TIER 1, 2, and 3 pages, the computer programs that analyze them are getting smarter and smarter... and theme-focused. What does that mean to you?... 1) They’ll analyze all your pages in their databases and decide upon the overall theme of your site. So none of your pages should be off-theme, or you’ll confuse the spiders. If you have a great idea for a highly profitable KeywordFocused Content Page that is off-theme, save it for your next niche.

Service Sellers Masters Course

2) Have you already created a bunch of “gateway pages” by simply duplicating one of your pages and then replacing one keyword with a different one? Search Engines look across all your site pages and penalize duplication. Ditch the tricks. Seek to please. That’s it for the structure of your site. Now let’s fill that structure with content that accomplishes our critical two goals… *************************************************** Deliver valuable content to your readers... ... AND tasty content to your spiders.

*************************************************** Build your site, supported every step of the way by the SBI! Action Guide and Site Central’s extensive help. To see how everything is integrated (no technical experience required!) into a powerful system that guarantees success, investigate the Video Guide at… http://demo.sitesell.com/

6.2.2. The Content of Your Site As A Pyramid Your home page introduces your theme and your Valuable PREselling Proposition. It answers the “what’s in it for me” question that a visitor is probably asking herself about your site. It can make or break that important “first impression” of your business. Focus on your Concept Keyword. Always, always, always remember you have two audiences -- your visitor and your spider. There’s no point in creating a fantastic home page that no one will find. As you write each Web page, use a specific keyword slightly more than your high school English teacher taught you as “good English.” This is the keyword that you want the Search Engines to rank highly. We’ll refer to this as a Specific Keyword from now on. Choose your Specific Keywords from the Master Keyword List of High-profitability keywords developed during DAY 3 (and continue to develop). A Web page’s Specific Keyword needs to do double-duty... • as the PREselling topic for the page and… • as a page-ranking element ( SE “on-page” criteria) The term General Keywords refers to more generic words that are associated with your Specific Keywords. You’ll never win the Search

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Engine war for General Keywords by themselves -- you don’t really want such non-specific traffic anyway. But many people use “WORD COMBOS” to search. They’ll enter a Specific Keyword and also a General Keyword one. For example, a searcher might enter... “exercise and weight loss” or… “+exercise +weight loss” or… “weight loss exercises.” As I said, you’ll never win at the engines for the General Keyword “exercise” – there is just too much competition. In any event, even if you win, the traffic is just too non-targeted to likely be interested in your specific niche. But if you include the General Keyword “exercise” in some of the major parts of your Web page (outlined below), you’ll do well when searchers use WORD COMBOS. And these are excellent, highly targeted visitors! So... blend some General Keywords with your Specific Keyword. You need to include them only once or twice -- you’re not trying to win the war for General Keywords, just for the WORD COMBOS. There is no need to use them nearly as many times as your Specific Keyword for that page. This is definitely worth doing. Why? Let me repeat... WORD COMBOS bring excellent, highly targeted visitors.

OK, back to our home page. For your home page, the Specific Keyword is your Concept Keyword... “factory outlet stores” in our example. That does not mean that you should start like this example... “Welcome to the-abdominal-trainer.com, your home for information about abdominal exercises. I am an A.C.E. certified personal trainer. The best research results are here.”

No-o-o-o-o-o... Keep it fun, bright, intriguing! Bring out the appropriate emotions for whatever your topic happens to be. 93

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For example... “Drenched with sweat, you grit your teeth in determination as you force out 3... 2... 1 last reps! Your eyes burn, but your abs are like fire! Passionate about abdominals? Looking to build an awesome six-pack, strengthen your lower back, lose a few pounds, or just build up some core strength? You need one-on-one abdominal exercise training! Are you ready for...

• the same abdominal exercises I teach my clients to attain exceptional results?

• the best ab exercise machines I recommend on the highway to the ultimate 6-pack?

• the most effective ab exercise equipment ever constructed, plus tons of relevant articles dedicated to building a slimmer, trimmer, and sexier YOU?! Nirvana, right? Nirvana!

Even better... Abdominal

Is this you? If so, welcome! You may be reading this at home, but you're on the road... a cyber-road to “Abdominal Heaven.”

Yes, you can write like that. Really, it’s a snap since you have lived this stuff. First, just feel the emotions that you feel. What are they? How do you feel? When do you feel them? You know this, right? Now put yourself into the skin of your reader. Put those emotions into your page. Use Make Your Content PREsell! as your mentor. Learn how to write to “communicate” with your visitors. Spark a connection, a lasting rapport with your audience. It’s a skill you can acquire on your own, even if you have never written anything before! http://mycps.sitesell.com/

From here on in, you’ll deliver the benefits of your site. As you do this, you continue to work in your Specific Keywords (and, to a lesser degree, your General Keywords) everywhere and often... but not too often.

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6.2.3. 80-20 SEO (Search Engine Optimization) The next several pages will introduce the 80-20 best practices of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Effective SEO improves the likelihood your submitted page will obtain a Top 10 to 20 ranking position for your Specific Keyword on a Search Engine’s results page. The higher the ranking, the better are your chances that a surfer will see your listing and click over to visit your site! Please follow these recommendations but be careful not to go overboard. Some online marketers fall into the trap of constantly experimenting with on-page criteria in order to obtain better rankings. There are so many criteria factored into the SEs' ranking algorithms that such efforts are extremely low-yield. The key is to build your pages properly the first time, and then focus on the “C” of… C

SEO is comprised of two elements… • On-page ranking criteria -- This refers to ranking elements occurring directly on the Web page you are creating. For example, the “Page Title” of your article as it appears on the <TITLE> tag of your page is an on-page criterion. • Off-page ranking criteria -- This refers to ranking elements that do not occur on this page but yet affect its ability to rank well and obtain listings. Off-page ranking criteria are important indicators of human behavior. Visitor reaction reflects the quality of a page. An example of such a criterion would be an in-pointing link (i.e., another site has your URL on its site). While your first priority will be to create and optimize your pages, obtaining a few credible in-pointing links should be a close second. This is known as building link popularity. (We’ll see how to do it in DAY 7.) Both on-page and off-page criteria are necessary for success. Let’s begin by highlighting the most important standards for on-page ranking criteria. To rank well at the SEs, your page’s Specific Keyword must be integrated in all the right places. Where, exactly?... 1) TITLE tag 2) META keyword tag 3) META description tag 4) H1 and other header tags 5) Body copy 6) Link tags 7) File name/domain name 95

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8) Image ALT tag and name of image Let’s look at each of these “on-page” criteria quickly... 1) TITLE tag = The Abdominal Trainer.com Personalized Abdominal Exercise Programs • Must contain your Specific Keyword at least once, no more than twice, and with some kind of variation or synonym. Try to include your most important General Keyword, too. • Use up to 70, even 80 characters. Get your most important message in, right at the beginning. If the engine cuts your title off at 60 characters in its listing, you would have been able to fire your “big gun.” Meanwhile, some engines will show up to 90 or so characters. • Remember, the title appears as the link in Search Engine listings. It must “get the click” -- so make sure it’s attractive, without being misleading. Getting your Title right for both your reader and engine is the single most important thing you can do. The TITLE tag is the key on-page elements. Make sure every single one of your pages (yes, even your TIER 3 pages) contains a relevant, keyword-rich TITLE tag. In general, it's a good idea to position your Specific Keyword near the beginning of your page elements… TITLE, META description, headline, body copy, etc. Search Engines give greater prominence to keywords that appear closer to the beginning, rather than the end.

2) META keyword tag = <META name= “KEYWORDS” content=”abdominal exercises”> • The page is about “abdominal exercise.” Don’t dilute your META tag with a million synonyms. • Consider adding a common synonym that has a nearly exact meaning (ex., ““equipment”) but don’t dilute your META tag with a million synonyms. • Consider adding a common synonym that has a near-exact meaning (ex., “stomach crunches”). • If you do put more than one keyword in this META tag (separated by commas), always put your most important one, the one that this page focuses upon, first. Here’s an example of an expanded META keyword tag... <META name=“KEYWORDS”content=”abdominal exercise, equipment, crunches, stomach, videos, 6 pack, personal trainer”>

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Don’t lose sleep fretting over your META keyword tag. It is rarely factored into ranking algorithms these days. Just include your most important keywords and a couple of variations, and move on. 3) META description tag = <META name=“DESCRIPTION” content=“Passionate about abdominals? Looking to build an awesome six-pack, strengthen your lower back, lose a few pounds, or just build up some core strength? You need one-on-one abdominal exercise training!”>

• The META description often comprises a portion of what searchers see in the Search Engine’s listings (SEs display their results slightly differently). So, like the Title tag, make sure it’s attractive, without being misleading. Your goal is to entice the prospective visitor to click through to your site. A gentle, good-natured tease, like the above, will do well. As with the META keywords tag, most SEs do not place much ranking weight on the text inside META description tags. So focus on getting the click through, and don’t worry too much about just the “right” blend of keywords for this tag. • Use 150-200 characters. Some engines cut off the Title listing at as little as 140 characters. So again, make sure you get your “#1 benefit statement” up front. Remember, a “benefit statement” does not have to be “in your face” -- read the META tag above. • Should contain your Specific Keyword at least once (try twice if it fits and see how it ranks). Include one or two of your most important General Keywords. Also, use common synonyms 2-3 times more. (Synonyms will work better and better as engines become more and more sophisticated. But your first priority is to place sufficient focus on your Specific Keyword.) • Remember, do not repeat the TITLE in this tag. The reader will just see the same phrase twice in the Search Engine’s listing, once in the Title and then again in the description. That’s wasting valuable “word real estate.” 4) H1 and other header tags = The Ultimate Abdominal Exercise and Fitness Program! The headlines are more important than your regular body copy. That’s true for both human readers and for the engines. As far as ranking criteria goes, it is likely that the <H1> tag is second only to the <TITLE> tag in importance. Please keep in mind that some engines don’t use the META description tag to form the second part of their listings (i.e., after the Title) in their search results. In those cases, they will usually use the first words on the page -- your H1 tag (first headline), and the first words in the body copy after that. 97

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Here are the key “musts” for your H1 tag... • Contains your Specific Keyword at least once. Try to include an important General Keyword, too (different from the one you used in your Title). • Does not exceed 80 characters, 40 is better. Long headlines feel rather “hypey.” • Helps to “get the click” -- so make sure it’s attractive, without being misleading. • Does not contain your Title. Otherwise, if the engine uses your H1 tag, your listing and H1 tag will both say the same thing... needless repetition. Consider this strategy… Take your META description tag and chop it into two pieces -- one part for the headline and one part for the opening paragraph of your body copy. If a single discussion warrants more than a single headline, use a smaller headline (<H2><H3>) containing variations of your page’s most important keywords. Special Note… Every single content page must contain a <H1> or <H2> tag for maximum ranking relevancy. If you are not using these tags, you are missing out on free Search Engine traffic!

5) Body copy We started the body copy at the beginning of DAY 6. Let’s see what our search result listing would look like for those engines that don’t use the META description tag. First of all, the Title appears as a link... The Abdominal Trainer.com Personalized Abdominal Exercise Programs

This is followed by the H1 tag and the beginning of the body copy... The Ultimate Abdominal Exercise and Fitness Program!

... and the beginning of the body copy... “Passionate about abdominals? Looking to build an awesome six-pack, strengthen your lower back, lose a few pounds, or just build up some core strength?”

Yes, that would pull me through to your page! So you see how important it is to start your body copy strongly, as we did above. Now don’t blow it! OVERdeliver great content in your body copy. 98

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Your intro paragraphs establish your VPP while quickening the pulse of your reader. After that, you’ll deliver the benefits of your site... you’ll answer the “what’s-in-it-for-me” question that every visitor asks when arriving at a site. And you’ll do it while blending in your keyword. You should work not only “abdominal exercise” into your copy, but common synonyms (if any) and variations like “best abdominal exercise” and “lower ab exercise” and “abdominal exercise equipment” and “abdominal exercise machine.” And also work in General Keywords that would likely be associated with your keyword (ex., program, routine, training videos, etc.). If someone searches with part or all of your Specific Keyword and one of these General Keywords, you’ll have a good shot at being found. And you’ll have a high-quality, interested and motivated visitor! Remember though, that synonyms and variations should not reduce your main keyword (“abdominal exercise”) to near invisibility. Establish your main keyword and then sprinkle in the synonyms and variations. How many times should you use your specific keyword in your body copy? As I said before, do use your Specific Keyword more than your high school teacher would have liked -- keyword density is of some importance for the SEs. However, don’t overdo it, either. Don’t cross over the line between properly optimized content and spam. The best rule of thumb is to read your page aloud, and ask yourself… “Does this sound natural?”

If too many incidences of your Specific Keyword are making your page sound a little odd, then replace these with appropriate synonyms. Surprisingly enough, top ranking SE pages have keyword densities a lot lower than you think -varying from as little as 1-4%. What about keyword prominence (i.e., the location in your page text where your keywords appear)? Yes, keyword prominence has a role to play as well. Make it a point to use your Specific Keyword more heavily in the opening two paragraphs (it must be in your opening sentence), and also in the closing paragraph. And then, like a good chef, sprinkle throughout! Your keyword scatter pattern should look like an hourglass... bigger (i.e., more frequent usage) on the top and bottom, and less (but still present) in the middle of the page. If you like, you may experiment with different numbers, frequencies and patterns of keywords as you build new pages. But again, don’t waste much time on this 99

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keyword density or prominence. The growing importance of off-page ranking criteria makes such efforts a low-yield effort. Follow the 80-20 best practices approach to SEO (which, as you will see later in DAY 7, also includes a good links programs), you’ll be fine. In the meantime, you know what to do… C

Question: How long should a page be?

As long as it needs to be, but no longer! Don’t worry about what the Search Engines think about length -- that’s important only to your reader. It makes no sense for an engine to score a short page any better than a long one. If length is of any importance, it’s minor. One caveat… The longer you make an article, the greater the chance you will wander off-topic and dilute the importance of your Specific Keyword. Slice-and-dice lengthy articles into smaller ones. This improves readability and gives you additional opportunities to rank well with the Search Engines. Bottom line? Use common sense, and avoid abuse. Keep your content focused to a single theme per page. Do not ever get offtarget and introduce a second topic to a page -- you’ll dilute the effectiveness of your Specific Keyword. And that goes for your site as well. The more you laserbeam on a single theme, the better you’ll do with the Search Engines. Of course if you’ve followed your passion, you will have lots of ideas for content. You may not know all you want to, but when you love your topic, learning more about it will be a pleasure. Whether you know a lot or a little to begin with, research can add pizzazz to your site. Search It! is a researcher’s dream. Reference Library for Content (STEP 1) includes an impressive list of links -- articles, news, quotations, encyclopedia entries, etc… And if that weren’t enough… Use Images -- Video -- Sound (STEP 1) to find extras you can use judiciously. Just remember that “Content is King”!

6) Link tags

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Links create the TIER 1-2-3 structure. They must flow naturally and smoothly within the content. Think of your links as providing a service to your readers. You are giving them beneficial recommendations or tips. So don’t just save your links for the end of the page. Add an in-context link within the body of a paragraph where appropriate. It’s not just your readers who see your links. The engines do, too. So include your Specific Keyword, and variations and synonyms thereof, in visible, blueunderlined text in your links to your merchants. Don’t just say… “Click here.” Say… “Click here for the best abdominal exercises as rated by top personal trainers.” The word “best abdominal exercises” in the link to your “bestabdominal exercises.html” page (see below) reinforces “best-abdominal exercises.html” for its Specific Keyword. This format clearly telegraphs the link’s ultimate destination, making it easier for your user to decide whether to click or not. Using a Specific Keyword within each link will help the SEs determine relevance for each page and for your site. While the use of internal links is unlikely to affect your site’s link popularity, it makes it easier for the SEs to accurately categorize your site. 7) File name/domain name Include your Specific Keyword in the filename of your html page. This action might also add a relevancy point or two with the engines. So if your Keyword-Focused Content Page is that TIER 2 page about “best abdominal exercises” that we discussed earlier (“The best abdominal exercises as rated by top personal trainers”), let’s name the file... “best-abdominal-exercises.html” The full URL, therefore, would be... http://www.the-abdominal-trainer.com/best-abdominal-exercises.html The only exception to this, of course, would be your home page. The home page must be named “index.html” -- but that’s OK. We already have its Specific Keyword included in the domain name, because it is your Concept Keyword! 8) Image ALT tag and name of image Although this is probably the least important in terms of ranking relevancy, it’s still a worthwhile strategy to follow, especially now that the major SEs (Yahoo!, 101

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Google, and Windows Live) all offer an “image search” option. Depending on your unique niche or topic, image search may be a significant generator of traffic. What should you do? Name a graphic on a page according to its keyword focus. For example, ab-exercise-machine.gif. And make its ALT tag “ab exercise machine,” too. (This is a bit complicated so ask a techie friend for help if necessary.) SBI! has a module, Analyze It!, that trains you to do this in such a way that you meet the on-page needs of the engines (i.e., the Specific Keyword is placed “just right” in the Title, Description, Headline, Body Copy, etc.). Your job is to do that while delivering great value to humans. And if this is “all geek to you,” don't worry. SBI!'s SiteBuilder trains you to build an effective Web page, block-by-block. Very much like a bike with training wheels, once you “get your balance” (5-10 pages), you can take the wheels off and easily transition to a free and simple “What You See Is What You Get” (“WYSIWYG”) HTML editor.

OK, that’s basically how to put together a high-value content page that hits both key points... *************************************************** Deliver valuable content to your readers... ... AND tasty content to your spiders. ***************************************************

The essential strategy is simple. Aim to get on-page criteria within an acceptable range for the Search Engines to rank you well. A good ranking is critical for pulling in free, targeted traffic. More importantly, though, don’t sweat the small stuff. If you’ve done your homework and built a list of profitable, niche-related keywords, achieving top rankings won’t be a difficult task. And remember what I said earlier… The SEs are placing more and more emphasis on off-page ranking criteria (human reaction to your site, for example). On-page ranking criteria are important, but they are only one part of the picture. To achieve the rankings you desire, both on-and-off page criteria must be addressed. (Off-page criteria will take center stage in the next chapter.) SBI!’s Analyze It! tool simplifies Search Engine Optimization. This tool analyzes each of your pages for over 30 important ranking criteria. If your page violates any of them, simple instructions explain how to rectify the situation.

Use the same approach for the TIER 2 and TIER 3 Keyword-Focused Content Pages. While the home page focuses upon the fundamental Concept Keyword, 102

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the other pages each focus upon one of the high-profitability keywords that your Master Keyword List has identified. Ultimately, you create Keyword-Focused Content Pages that... • fit with your Site Concept and VPP And... • have a good SUPPLY/DEMAND ratio And that... • you enjoy writing about. Each page wraps a high-value topic around each Specific Keyword, following the guidelines outlined above. SBIers have four exceptional resources to keep them on track and up-todate in the Search Engine World… 1) Traffic HQs 2) The SBI! Forums (THE Place For Friendly, Success-Focused Discussion). 3) Tips and Techniques and Monetization HQs (topical articles) 4) Site Build It! Express (a weekly newsletter)

6.3. Question and Answer Period Whoops! What’s that? Some hands are up. Questions?... Question: How is this different from gateways or doorway pages?

Tons of people use gateway or doorway pages. In general, these low-value pages fail to deliver good content, and do not address the best interests of the SEs or prospective visitors. Worse still, such sites are in danger of being banned by the SEs. The engines take a dim view of any Web page that has no in-pointing links, even from its own domain (a tell-tale sign of a doorway page). As a result, people who use such pages are constantly in jeopardy of losing their businesses overnight. 103

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Your Theme-Based Content Site, on the other hand, creates real content, easily accessible from your home page or TIER 2 pages. You’re creating value, not simply spider bait! You’re addressing the needs of the visitor and of the SEs. Those are huge differences. C T P M is the only long-term solution for small business people who want to build sustainable profits online. Instead of trying to outguess or outplay the Search Engines, create a site that stands out as a winner when the spiders come to call. Make Your Links WORK! provides an excellent “big picture” perspective regarding Search Engine Optimization, in-pointing links and other trafficbuilding strategies. Download your free copy of this must-have resource here… http://buildit.sitesell.com/MYLW.pdf

Another question?... Question: What do the Search Engines look for?

Answer… So glad you asked! DAY 7 will examine this question more closely but for now, here’s a quick answer… Search Engines want to satisfy a visitor’s need by delivering the best possible results for his/her search query. And why does a Search Engine care so much about this? The Search Engines must satisfy its clients. To determine who the SEs’ true clients are, just follow the money. Advertisers pay the SEs, not surfers. Therefore, advertisers are the true clients! So the #1 goal of a Search Engine is to provide lots of exposure to their advertisers’ ads. If search results are relevant and of good quality, satisfied surfers will return to search another day, generating more ad impressions. If they are not, the surfer will leave to search somewhere else. If this happens enough times… well, you see where this is going. Ad revenues fall, advertisers go elsewhere, and the SE slowly dies or fades away. Bottom line? The SEs’ primary mandate is to deliver relevant and quality search results to surfers. It’s WIN-WIN-WIN all around… The surfer wins by finding what she needs. The advertisers win by getting lots of exposure to prospective new clients. And, the Search Engines win when they generate the revenue they need to survive and remain competitive. 104

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And how does a Search Engine recognize relevance and quality? Except for the top executive and a few select professionals at each individual SE, nobody knows the exact algorithms used to evaluate page relevance. However, we do know for certain that on-page and off-page criteria form the backbone of any SE’s ranking algorithms. Much of what we’ve been covering so far in this course has to do with on-page criteria. Now for a brief note about off-page criteria… Obviously, an SE will always have to examine the elements of any Web page to determine its context. A page about porcupines, for example, would have the word “porcupine” in the TITLE and heading tags, in the META keywords, and sprinkled throughout the page text. The word “zebra”, on the other hand, would be conspicuously absent from such a page. And what about off-page criteria? As Search Engines become more sophisticated, they track more external factors to determine a page’s relevancy. For example, if a high-value, topicrelated site links to your site, the Search Engine considers your site more credible by association. If a dozen sites do the same, your site appears even more so. I’ll talk about link strategies in much greater detail in the next chapter. For now, recognize that credible links are an important measure of human behavior. Any Tom, Dick, or Jane can use software to create a perfectly optimized page about porcupines, for example. But only a high-quality, relevant document written by a porcupine expert will garner in-pointing links from credible porcupine authorities. It is this combination of off-page criteria that reflect human behavior and on-page criteria (as outlined earlier) that most SEs use to determine relevance. I was just about to call it a day, but let’s go with one more question… Question: Just how important is design?

Hmm. This changes the direction of our discussion a bit but it’s a good question all the same! Design is not as important as most folks think. Words do the PREselling, not graphics or colors or font styles. Start with a clean and welcoming Look & Feel. Add a simple but professionallooking logo. Make your site easy to navigate. Then get out of your own way and let your words do the talking. 105

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Question: Can I follow the C

M approach on a free Web hosting service?”

Answer… Absolutely. But remember that success is much more than just putting up a site. Don’t be caught by the “cheap-quick-easy” advertising lure. Free sites have two huge strikes against them. They’re treated with disdain by both human visitors and the Search Engines. Let’s talk about humans first. When I notice that a site’s URL is at a free hosting service, I don’t bother clicking to visit. If I have a special reason, I might go -- but I arrive at a free site with doubts. Most folks harbor the same kind of bias. And what about the engines? Free sites don’t get treated with much respect by the Search Engine spiders, and below zero respect by the directories like Yahoo!. Even on the Net, there's no such thing as truly free. Think about it... a company has to make money to survive. One way or another, hidden or not, the service costs you. But the low credibility of free sites costs you way, way too much… your time. If engines don’t spider you, or if customers don’t respect the site, or if advertising lures your customers away and hurts the sales-effectiveness of your site, you’re wasting your time. And that’s way more valuable than less than $25 per month to host your own site. You must put a value on your time if you want to succeed. All successful people will tell you that time is their most precious commodity. A non-free site with your own domain is a prerequisite to building credibility with your readers and with the Search Engines. So find a good Web hosting service and put up a real site. For the $25 or so per month, it’s worth it. Site Build It! builds a site that is a powerful traffic-builder and customerconverter. No other Web hosting company provides such success. Why build just a Web site when you can build a business? http://service-selling.sitesell.com/

Before proceeding to DAY 7, please complete your DAY 6 Goal-of-the-DAY, and take note of your Ongoing Goal... Create one Keyword-Focused Content Page per day. Start with the TIER 2 pages. Then keep adding TIER 3 pages, 1 per day. Create 50-70 maximum. Then start a new Theme-Based Content Site. If your time is limited, reduce the goal to a page every 2 or 3 days. Even then, you’ll have a traffic-building, income-earning site in three months. Consistency 106

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and discipline, not speed, are the keys. It’s OK to be the tortoise… http://tortoise.sitesell.com/ … as long as you stay the course. What’s next? More visitors, more traffic… the lifeblood of your business…

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7. DAY 7 Build Free Traffic “Build it and they will come.” -- Field of Dreams (1989) Goal-of-the-DAY... Generate free targeted traffic by doing these actions… 1) Work the free major Search Engines. 2) Understand why "tweaking" is a low-yield exercise. 3) Build a quality links program to improve your link popularity. 4) Seed "word of mouth" buzz. Work your niche. Talk about a “field of dreams!” If you just simply build it, your content site might as well be a cornfield in Iowa, visited only by ghosts! Yes, it’s true. This course has shown you how to develop a strong Theme-Based Content Site, completely loaded with high-profitability Keyword-Focused Content Pages. These pages OVERdeliver to your human readers, and at the same time, satisfy the Search Engines. So you’re way ahead of 99% of e-business people on the Net. You have created a diamond, shining brilliantly with terrific content. Does that guarantee you success? Sorry to say... nope! Why not? Because it’s just sitting there, buried in the middle of that huge cornfield, that field of dreams. What’s missing in order to turn your dreams into reality and build income through content? Free, targeted traffic. If you can't attract free, targeted visitors via the Search Engines, you’re immediately at a huge disadvantage. That’s because you’re going to have to pay to drive traffic to your Web site. While paying for supplemental traffic can make sense for many online businesses, you definitely do not want this to be your primary source of traffic. There are a number of reasons why not… 1) Depending on your niche or topic, advertising can be very expensive. It also prevents you from ever really owning your own business. When you stop paying for advertising, your business disappears. 2) If you do not know what your ROI (Return On Investment) is or exactly what 108

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each and every visitor is worth to you, advertising can be a bit of a gamble. This is especially true for brand new sites that are still feeling their way around. 3) Visitors who arrive from advertising campaigns recognize that the relationship is purely commercial, and they expect to be pitched. Obviously, they will have their guard up and will be more difficult to convert into customers. On the other hand, when you “get it right” at the Search Engines, the engines will deliver more and more targeted traffic on daily basis. Use SBI! to put your site into the Top 3% of all sites on the Net… http://traffic.sitesell.com/

Take-home lesson? Concentrate on ways that will consistently deliver the largest amounts of lowcost, sustainable traffic. Don’t try to “do it all” right off the bat. OK. Let’s begin with the engines…

7.1. Work With The Free Major Search Engines The Search Engines will provide you with lots of traffic as long as you work with them rather than against them. That requires some patience, motivation, and a collaborative, WIN-WIN attitude. The traffic-building process boils down to these actions... 1) Build an “on-page-optimized” Keyword-Focused Content Page, one that delivers content that will “WOW” human visitors. 2) Submit that page to the Search Engines. If you don’t submit your pages, you won’t get into a Search Engine’s database at all. And, if you’re not in a Search Engine’s index, you’re invisible on the Net. Build another Content page after you submit your page. 3) Check for each spider's visit. Continue to build more Content pages. 4) Check for the presence of your page in each Search Engine’s index (i.e., database). This can take anywhere from 6 to 8 weeks, or even longer. Uh, should I say it? Yes... Continue to build more Content pages. 5) Evaluate performance of your page. You guessed it! Keep building more 109

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Content pages. 6) Track your performance on a regular basis. As you start to see results, you will do #3-6 less and less often (and SBI! takes care of #2). Why? Because you'll be busy building more Content pages. It may take 2-3 months, but your efforts will pay off. You will start to rank well for a few pages at one engine, and then more and more pages at different engines. That success will grow as you continue to build out your site’s content. And that can only mean increasing volumes, month-on-month, of targeted traffic. This is the beginning of the snowball effect in action! Right now, though, let's see how SBI!'s integrated tools make the traffic-building process a snap... Phase #1) Once you are finished building a page (on-page-optimized with the help of Analyze It!), WorldSubmitter automatically adds it to your sitemap file and pings (notifies) Google, Yahoo! Search, Live Search and Ask to let them know about the new page. Phase #2) SpiderWatcher checks your site’s log files regularly, looking to see which of the major engines’ spiders have visited, and which of your pages they “took back to their mother ships.” Phase #3) ListChecker watches for when each engine lists (i.e., “indexes”) each of your pages (that have been spidered). The dates are recorded in the Submit-Spider-List Report. At this point, the pages are officially in the database, but not yet ranked. If you do not become listed within a certain amount of time, or if an engine ever drops you from its index (i.e., its “listings”), WorldSubmitter automatically re-pings it according to each engine’s acceptable limits, as outlined in the section on spiders above. Phase #4) After your page has been submitted, spidered, and listed, the Keyword Ranking Report tells you where your page ranks, at each major engine, for the specific keyword that the page focuses upon. Phase #5) The Keyword Searches Report tells you the keyword searches that found each page (and # of times), which Search Engine(s) found each page for each keyword (and # of times) and how you rank today for that keyword search. See how SBI! makes the process a snap? You get the exact tools and data you need to win at the Search Engines! http://order.sitesell.com/

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To sum things up... Working with the Search Engines is essential. However, do not allocate more than a half-hour per week to monitor SE performance. The creation of quality relevant content always serves your business best. Remember, Content drives C T P M, not the engines. The engines merely (and naturally) serve their own interests best by ranking your site highly. Now that we have the big picture of where we are going, let’s get down to business…

7.1.1. Submit Your URLs Submitting your site to the engines is a necessary task. If you wait for the SEs’ spiders to find and index your entire site, you could wait forever. Submission hastens the entire listing process along, and guarantees your site doesn’t get lost “between the cracks.” Result? You gain maximum and controlled exposure. The four major free Search Engines will account, either directly through their own search services or indirectly through partner sites, for about 95% of your traffic. That’s right, just four! What about the service I saw the other day offering to submit my site to 1,000 Search Engines for $29.95?

Avoid these services like the plague. “Submit to all 1,000 Engines” services submit mainly to free-for-all links pages. They are totally useless, and will do nothing for you but fill your inbox with an endless barrage of spam. OK, let’s begin the submission process. I’ve included each SE’s current protocols here, but please double-check each one to ensure nothing has changed in the meantime. Ready? We’re off to the top of the list… Google http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl Yahoo! Search

http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html Windows Live http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WSDD2 111

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Ask.com http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/webmasters.shtml#18

7.1.2. Track The Engines’ Spiders Even after you do submit, some of the engines take weeks, even months, to send their spiders over to your site to “bring back the goodies.” No problem. A real business takes time, unlike those get-rich-quick schemes floating around on the Net. So while you’re waiting, build more content pages and obtain some quality in-pointing links. These efforts will hasten the listing process along. How can you tell when a spider visits your site? The answer is simple. Each SE’s spider has a name, which shows up in your log files when it visits your site. For example, Google’s spider is called “Googlebot”. Yahoo!’s is called “Slurp.” So keep your eyes peeled for a visit from one of these friendly little creatures in your log files. Although a spider visit does not mean your page has been added to an SE index, it does mean that the SE has not forgotten about you! Your site is probably queued for addition. If you don’t see an engine’s spider within a certain amount of time after submitting (varies for each engine), you can resubmit according to each engine’s acceptable limits. Generally though, if you haven’t been indexed and listed with 6-8 weeks, do the following… 1) Resubmit according to each SE’s protocols. 2) Build your link popularity. Quality in-pointing have a credentializing effect. Without a few to validate your site, some SEs may be hesitant to list you in their indices. If you have no links, and you can’t seem to get listed, this is very likely the issue. Even if you aren’t listed immediately, don’t lose heart. Every new Web business has to go through the hassle of establishing itself with the SEs. That’s true whether you have $100 to invest in your business, or $10,000. Keep your focus on the “C” of… C

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… and making your site THE authority on your theme.

7.1.3. Check And Monitor Presence First, the good news… you’ve been spidered! That means you’re in, right? Not necessarily. However, it does mean that the Search Engines know about you. Yes, you are on their radar, but you may not yet be included in the databases from which they draw their results. So that leads you to your next mission… Monitor each engine to ensure it lists your pages. Once your pages start showing up in each SE’s database, they are ready to be delivered to an eager search audience. Hooray! Targeted traffic! The best way to check your listings is to use Search It!… Search It! > Indexed Pages (STEP 1) > Pages in Google (STEP 2). This query will show you every page of your domain that is listed in Google. Repeat this search to check your presence at each of the other engines.

7.1.4. Evaluate The Performance Of Your Pages At this point, your pages are spidered and indexed. But there is one small catch. In order for people to visit your site, they must find it first. Being indexed is not enough. Ideally, you need to have a Top 10 listing on a SE’s search results page to get any exposure at all. Most surfers will not check out more than ten listings in their search for information. Luckily, you are way ahead of the curve, and miles ahead of your competitors due to this course. By building a comprehensive list of niche-focused, profitable and “in-demand” keywords, your ranking potential gets off to a roaring start and can only go upwards! Now let’s see how you can evaluate the performance of your pages… 1) Manually -- Surf to each SE, and search for each of your KFCP’s Specific Keyword (just as a prospective visitor would). For example, let’s use this keyword, “dangers of high cholesterol,” to illustrate. Check to see where it shows up and in what position. Keep track of your results in a simple database. 2) Automatically -- Use specialized software to automate the evaluation process. 113

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Site Build It!’s SE HQ provides ranking reports for all your KFCPs. And for any poorly performing page, SBI!’s Analyze It! tool shows you how to optimize it better. 3) Through the use of log files -- Use log file analyzer software (server or client side) to identify the keywords that people used to find you. Check with your Web host to see what kind of online traffic statistics they can provide. More than likely, though, they will not give the keyword stats that you need. Tracking your rankings can be a long and tedious affair. If you’re not careful, it can eat into a lot of time. Instead focus your attention on those efforts that will bring your affiliate business the best results, the fastest.

7.1.5. To Tweak or Not to Tweak? How to Avoid the SEO Quagmire Many Webmasters, experienced and otherwise, fall into the trap of excessively adjusting or tweaking their Web pages in order to improve SE rankings. (I use the term “tweaking” to refer to the constant experimentation with keyword density and keyword placement in the various page elements.) It is absolutely essential that you avoid the quagmire of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and focus instead on building your business. Never, except in extreme circumstances, tweak your low-performing Web pages. If a page isn’t ranking for its Specific Keyword, don’t worry about it. Follow the guidance outlined so far in this course and get your on-page criteria correct (Analyze It!’s job). As you build pages, you might try experimenting by increasing or decreasing keyword presence. But once you have optimized your page as best you can, it's time to move on. Focus on creating new pages. In the “good old days” (circa 1996-2001), the SEs were relatively simple to reverse-engineer. Tweaking efforts were generally rewarded with higher rankings, and an accompanying surge of visitors. Today, however, it’s a different story altogether. Due to the SEs’ increasingly complex ranking algorithms, and a heightened focus on off-page criteria (which collectively form an important indicator of human approval of a Web page), the practice of “tweaking” has become a low-yield affair. The key to top rankings lies off-page (ex., credible in-pointing links from recognized authorities in your field) and not on-page with the manipulation of keyword densities. 114

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Bottom line? Tweaking diverts you from more fruitful efforts -- the creation of more optimized content, the acquisition of some credible in-pointing links, the establishment of joint venture partnerships, building some link-buzz, and so on. Keep in mind that each new optimized Keyword-Focused Content Page that you create represents another opportunity to rank well at the SEs. I'm going to repeat that last sentence because it’s such an important concept... Each new optimized Keyword-Focused Content Page that you create represents another opportunity to rank well at the SEs. What do you think an engine ultimately is going to prefer? 200 “Analyzed” pages that humans love or 50 pages that you've tweaked like mad? Important Tip… We are finding evidence that the sheer size of your site counts as an “off-page” criterion. The total body of your work counts. It’s a waste of time to tweak your pages when the key to a top ranking may lay off-page, not onpage. Trust the process. Build a content-rich site, and deliver great information about the theme related topics (keywords) that your brainstorming has found. Create Content, Content, and more Content. If you do that, your pages will deliver all the off-page criteria you need! It always boils down to the same four letters, and “C” starts it all... C

Leave the tweaking to your competitors. Let them “fiddle while Rome burns.” Your main priority is to build a vibrant, profitable business! But let’s suppose that not a single one of your pages is ranking at the SEs for any of your keywords. Is there a time when tweaking your pages is appropriate? Sure but please do run through this short checklist first before you tweak… 1) Review your keywords. Have you targeted generic, highly competitive terms (ex., health, travel, or worst of all, “Web marketing”)? If you've done your research and brainstorming well, you should have a nice blend of keywords -from the more general, “bigger-topic” keywords (ex. “Anguilla”) which are generally best used for a home page to a range of keywords appropriately planned for TIER 2 and 3 pages (ex. “best Anguilla restaurants”).

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Do not expect to rank highly for the most competitive keywords at first. They will be the last to rank well. Generally, the most focused, specific keywords will start ranking first. And that first trickle of traffic, combined with securing a few inbound links, is what starts momentum building. Proper keyword research is one of the most important elements of building a profitable Web business. Keywords are the lynchpins to your success. Target the wrong keywords, and you’ll get the wrong results. If all your keywords are highly competitive or generic, you’ll find it very difficult to start the momentum. Traffic starts by “eating at the edges.” Win the battles for the less competitive words first (generally TIER 3 pages, but occasionally TIER 2, depending on how the topics layout best for your site). As your site grows, as off-page criteria grow, your overall rankings for all keywords rise steadily over time. For example, anguilla-beaches.com initially never ranked in the Top 1000 for “Anguilla.” Over time, as the site grew, more and more people found and loved her site and gave her links from other sites about Anguilla. As a result, the off-page criteria grew. Build your site. Deliver great content for a wide variety of keywords, including some easy-to-win ones that fit with your site. Good things happen as this interview about “The Long Tail of Marketing” explains… http://longtail.sitesell.com/

OK, you have a good mix of keywords and over 20 pages, yet not a single keyword is ranking yet. What to do? 2) Double-check that you heeded all the recommendations outlined in this course. Assuming that you have and all is OK... 3) Build your site's link popularity by securing some quality in-pointing links from related credible sites. (More on this in the next section.) Still not ranking? Not even for your easiest keywords? Now's the time for tweaking... but do not tweak existing pages. It’s still not worth it. Instead, experiment as you build new KFCPs for easy keywords. Add an extra keyword to your Title. Increase the keyword density of your page copy. Vary the keyword prominence somewhat. Don’t be afraid to push the envelope a bit -add here, subtract there. Every site concept sits in its own “microenvironment.” You are not competing against every Web page in the world, just those in your particular niche. So it may take a bit more or less to “find your sweet spot.” 116

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Before long, you will begin to rank well. Stick to the easier keywords and experiment until you do. It’s critical that you do not veer away from... C

Do not let SEO dominate your thoughts. The CTPM process simply works Some businesses start the traffic trickle within a month’s time. Others may take six months. Certain businesses take longer to mature in the SEs. What does it matter? You are building a long-term business. Simply keep doing what you are doing. Patience rules. Every business has a hump stage... a period where you seem to be stagnating. But it will pass. To sum up everything… Content drives the C

M train.

Content builds authority with the SEs, garners in-pointing links from Webmasters, and builds your credibility with your visitors. Every newly optimized page offers another opportunity for top rankings. Tweaking diverts you from creating new content. It is a low-yield, time consuming process that derails your business, is frustrating, and puts your focus on all the wrong things. Your business is not SEO... it’s generating revenue from something you know and love! SBI!’s reporting tools provide you with an informative snapshot of your site. Take the Quick Tour to see first-hand examples of the different reports… http://quicktour.sitesell.com/

7.2. Improve Your Link Popularity… Build Incoming Links “Pleasing” the Search Engines and your human visitors is why it’s important for you to develop an effective linking strategy. Links are one kind of off-page criteria that measure human reaction to your content. The more sites that link to your site, and the more important the linking sites are, and the closer the linking sites are to the theme of your site (even to the topic of

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individual pages), the more “popularity points” Search Engines award to your site (and page). This chapter provides a brief introduction to link popularity. For the full overview, download the free Make Your Links WORK!… http://value-exchange.sitesell.com/ Get the jump on your competition!

Search Engines consider the number of in-pointing links to a site as a way to… 1) Establish credibility. An in-pointing link from a quality, related site tells the Search Engine that another Webmaster thinks highly enough of a site to link to it. See how the link becomes representative of human feedback? The link constitutes a vote of confidence. And the more highly a Search Engine regards the site that provides the link, the more powerful that “vote” is! For example… Suppose you have a Web site all about porcupines. The Web authority on porcupines decides to link to your site. In essence, this tells the SEs… “This is a credible porcupine resource. As such, it deserves to be listed in your database.”

This recommendation carries weight because the Web authority on porcupines already has established credibility with the SEs. Obviously, there’s no better judge of the quality of a porcupine site than a porcupine expert. Links from lesser authorities or from sites with related themes or topics (i.e., zoo, or animal sites) are helpful they don’t carry the same weight. And what about off-theme links? Do not attempt to solicit links from sites unrelated to your topic or theme. Why would a Web site about Viagara or online casino games link to your site about porcupines? Usually it’s because they want to artificially increase link popularity, and manipulate the SEs. The SEs don’t like to be manipulated, as it jeopardizes the integrity of their search results. So you can expect them to ignore, and at worst, penalize you for off-theme links. 2) Formulate ranking algorithms. More and more, Search Engines are factoring link popularity and link credibility (i.e., where your in-pointing links originate from) into their ranking algorithms. That’s why it’s so important not to fall into the trap of continuously tweaking your on-page criteria. Without a few credible links, you may find it difficult to get listed in some of the major SEs (especially Google). And of course, your site won’t make it into the 118

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databases of SEs that do not permit site submission. Their spiders must find your site on their own. The good news is that for most businesses, a very small number of credible links will do the job. 99% of most Web sites do not have many in-pointing links. (If the SEs were to weigh in-pointing links too heavily, they’d make 99% of the Net disappear!) Of course, if your topic is much more general in scope (i.e., “e-commerce,” “computers,” “sports cars,” and that sort of thing), obtaining links becomes more and more important. Some people misunderstand the role of links. While links will bring in some traffic, it is a miniscule amount. A properly optimized KFCP wins hands down. Creating content should always remain your #1 priority. Use links to build your site’s credibility with the SEs. Content is what builds traffic, not links.

Question: When do I start building my link popularity?

That’s a good one! Don’t worry about link popularity until you have built at least 20-30 content pages. Why? Webmasters will link only to sites of value. Quality content is the currency of the Web so you will need a sufficient amount of it before you go link hunting. To get a Webmaster’s “vote” of confidence, your site must provide some benefit to his/her audience. Directories too, are only interested in adding Web sites of substance and value. A more mature site will also help you impress a human editor and secure a major directory listing. Directories Are Different From Search Engines Think of directories as gigantic bookmark lists, organized into categories and sub-categories, and sub-sub-categories, etc. They do not spider pages. For many directories, humans review and decide what “gets in.” If a directory was a nightclub, the editors would be bouncers. If you don’t add to the scene, you don’t make the scene! The major directories drove significant amounts of traffic in the “good old days.” Yahoo!'s directory sent as many visitors as Google does today. Today, you pay the $299 (commercial site fee) for Yahoo!’s directory (not

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their engine) mostly for the quality of the link, not for the traffic (although certain less crowded niches may still send some traffic). The directory model has faded badly because it is human-compiled. That is simply too slow and inefficient to keep up with the rapidly growing Net. Very few surfers use directories to perform their keyword queries because they cannot provide the breadth of diversity and relevance of search results that the major SEs can. Bottom line? A directory listing's value today is not the traffic it brings, but the quality of the inbound link it provides. The best directories to be listed in are managed and maintained by human editors. Every site in these directories has met a certain minimum standard of quality. If a major free Search Engine finds your listing in DMOZ.org (Open Directory Project) or dir.yahoo.com (and, to a lesser extent, the second tier human-reviewed directories), it knows your site belongs in its database as well, and deserves a couple of “quality kudo points,” too. Securing a major directory listing is a particularly good way to accelerate credibility for a new site. Unfortunately, DMOZ is slow and Yahoo! costs $299/year for a commercial site, as much as all of SBI!. How To Maximize Your Chances Of Acceptance Note: These comments apply to both major directories and second tier ones (discussed in the next section). 1) Increase Number of Pages Wait until you've built your site up to at least 20-30 pages before you submit to the directories (free and paid). Anything less is likely to be rejected for reasons of insufficient content. 2) Follow the Requirements Each directory has a set of requirements you must follow when submitting your site. Failure to follow them can mean an immediate rejection. Always submit to the correct category, and do not submit to more than one category. 3) Delay Monetization Apply before monetizing (especially before you add Google/Yahoo! ads and affiliate links). Many Tier 2 directory editors are anti-commercial, as if making money somehow lessens your site. So patience pays... Some SBIers have tried to apply to Yahoo!'s directory as non-commercial, but it’s not wise to try to fool Yahoo! this way. Since you should apply as a commercial site ($299), it’s fine to have some monetization. But don’t cover your site in Google AdSense ads. Remember, editors are human! If you are receiving 50 visitors per day, and already have a few non-

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directory in-pointing links, don’t wait… Monetize! What To Do If Rejected By A Major? Keep things in perspective. The editor system is a subjective one. Do not let it bother you. Instead, learn. Apply again to a month later, this time in a different category (hopefully with a different editor). But only do this after improving your site. (More details to come.)

Once you have your 20-30 high value pages, build a simple inbound link program, sprinkled with a few high-quality value exchanges (be patient) and even a couple of super-high-quality outbound-only links. Here’s how to get your link program rolling along… #1) Get IN-coming links from the major directories, and second tier directories. Second tier directories are not quite on par with the majors. That shouldn't deter you, though. Remember, you are not after the traffic from these directories. You want the valuable in-pointing link. There are other advantages, too, that make a 2nd tier directory a valid option to consider... • Entry is easier. • They are also relatively cheap. • You can generally get a good link in a relevant category, at a higher level than you would in a major. (Generally, links closer to the top level directory are worth more -- i.e., a listing in Shopping > Clothes is worth more than one in Shopping > Clothes > Women’s Clothes.) • Your listing is not diluted by a million other links in the same category, making it more valuable to a Search Engine (the more links on a page, the less value is bestowed to each link). Look into theme directories for your niche, along with local directories for your state/province or region. You can also investigate these two resources... 1) Strongest Links is a list of directories that you can sort by name, Google PR, Alexa ranking, whether they have free submissions, and the cost of paid submissions. http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php Click on the link at the top of each column to sort the list. When you're done with that list, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the link to the geographic and niche directories.

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2) InfoVileSilencer is another site with a list of directories (many are not included in Strongest Links). http://info.vilesilencer.com/

#2) Get IN-coming links from theme-specific sections of the major free directories. Explore Search It!’s Inbound Link Opportunities category…

#3) Participate in SiteSell’s Value Exchange. It is the simplest, fastest, most efficient, and (most importantly) most real way to identify high-value sites that want to link to your site. It's also a true ethical use of the Net, exactly the way Search Engines want you to do it -- relevant sites linking to relevant sites only. See this blog post… http://blog.sitesell.com/sitesell/2008/07/in-my-previous.html #4) OUTbound-link with high-quality theme-related, non-competing sites as you happen to discover them in the course of normal business or surfing -exchange links with them, if possible. Linkage counts both ways, IN-pointing and OUT-pointing. If your outgoing “linkees” go to an income-generating source for you, even better! Links OUT count with the human editors of directories and your visitors, too. If directory editors see that you provide bona fide links to other quality sites, your site is more credible, a more valuable resource for their directory. Visitors appreciate being presented with quality, credible links to related material that further enhances their surfing experience. On the other hand, nothing is more damaging to you, your credibility and your ability to build your business than linking to an inferior Web site. By providing a 122

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link, you are in essence placing your seal of approval on the linked Web site. Should that site be of low quality, visitors will question your judgment. The SE’s will not take a positive view of such practices either. Should you linkout to a low quality site that practices deceptive linking strategies, the SEs may penalize you. After all, you are in essence condoning such activity. What’s the take-home message here? While you can’t control which sites link to your Web site (and therefore cannot be held responsible for it), you must choose your out-pointing links wisely. IN-pointing and OUT-pointing links are both important. In general, of course, you want to have far more in-pointing. And don’t make all out-pointing links purely monetary links. You want to show your visitors that you have their best interests at heart, not just yours! By far, the easiest, long-term strategy for building link popularity is a passive one. Simply build a site of such high quality that people want to link to it in order to increase the value of their own visitors’ experiences. What could be easier? Your link popularity builds itself!

7.3. Seed Link-Building Buzz Building a buzz is a secondary traffic-building technique. Depending on your situation, some of the strategies outlined in this chapter will work very well for you. Others will not. Either way, wait to investigate secondary strategies until after your business has a solid foundation of quality content. In other words, until you have at least 50 quality content pages, your efforts are better utilized by focusing upon… C

… and building traffic from the major Search Engines. As far as “bang for the buck” goes, this approach yields a far better Return On Investment (ROI) for your time. How do you the buzz? First piece of advice, don’t bother with those “recommend-a-friend” scripts. Less than one visitor in a thousand fills them in. There’s a far simpler way to get “word of mouth.” Deliver great content. Want an example? Let’s say that you have a wonderful theme-based site about 123

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succulent plants (i.e., cactus, euphorbia, etc.). You have a terrific page about all the tricks you have developed for propagating them. Other aficionados find that page at the engines. Do you think they’ll tell friends, or forums, or cactus associations, about this terrific info? Sure they will. Just one more huge benefit of OVERdelivering! But one big warning… Average content = near-zero world of mouth. After all, have you ever been excited by “average?” Great content is the only way to go! Have visitors create content for you when you use Content 2.0. Turn any page into an irresistible invitation for visitors to join in the fun. Other visitors then comment and rate the pages. For a general overview, visit http://c2.sitesell.com/

When the time is right, use these other techniques to seed link-building buzz, especially since you are selling your own service… • write articles for e-zines or article distribution sites • make posts in forums, discussion groups, mailing lists, newsgroups (depending on your niche and situation, these can be fairly effective… or totally useless) Forum postings can build up your site’s link popularity somewhat, provided they are closely related in topic to your site. Use Search It! (Inbound Link Opportunities) and identify the best choices.

• publish your own blog, a Web log/diary (discussed in DAY 8) • use a signature file (i.e., contact information, including your URL and preferably your VPP) in your daily e-mail correspondence. • social bookmarking sites http://www.furl.net/ http://del.icio.us/ http://friendfeed.com/ http://www.stumbleupon.com/ With Site Build It!, just a click of a button (for SiteBuilders) or the addition of a 124

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simple tag (for HTML Uploaders) gives your visitors an easy way to bookmark, share, and buzz your pages. Socialize It! quickly links your visitors to seven of the largest, highest ROI sites on the Internet today, encouraging them to share your site with their friends and family... or simply save the page for later browsing. • participate in Yahoo! Answers http://answers.yahoo.com/ • send out press releases Depending on your circumstances, some or all of the above techniques could be effective in seeing an increase in your link-building buzz… Circumstance 1) The “nichier” your site, the better. If your site covers a topic already well-addressed by a zillion other sites, it will be much harder to stand out from the crowd and make an impression with your visitors. Circumstance 2) Your site should have over 50 pages. There must be substance. Circumstance 3) Your content should be of outstanding value to targeted visitors. If all three circumstances are present, then investigating buzz strategies makes sense. There’s no point in making a post or writing an article otherwise. OK, suppose you’ve got a high-quality content-rich niche site that delivers outstanding content. You make a fantastic post at a relevant forum, including your conservative signature file. What happens next? Forum visitors visit your site, tell their friends, put a link on their site to yours, and discuss your site at relevant forums and discussion groups. Talk about a homerun buzz! A word of caution… Even the best forum posts won’t generate traffic like a properly optimized content page. Forum posts will yield a short-term blip of traffic until your post cycles off the main page of the discussion. On the other hand, properly optimized KFCPs deliver traffic 24/7, 365 days a year. A forum post has a relatively short lifespan in comparison.

Now, before you proceed to DAY 8, please complete your DAY 7 Goal-of-theDAY, and take note of your Ongoing Goal... 125

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Create more relevant, quality content. Build a solid links program. Be patient and trust the process. If you have an immature Web site, you really should investigate a few of the directory options presented in this chapter. You don’t need to spend a lot of money but a couple of decent links will go a long way to keep the SEs spidering. Let’s now move towards deepening the relationship with all that targeted traffic…

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8. DAY 8 Build Relationships Big shots are only little shots who kept shooting -- Christopher Morely (1880-1957) Goal-of-the-DAY... Identify a way to communicate with your visitors on a regular basis and build a relationship based on trust and credibility. Become a friend rather than a stranger. “We all prefer to do business with those we like and trust.” That simple truth has existed since prehistoric (wo)man traded mammoth-tusk carvings for new-model wheels. It’s a shame so many business people forget or ignore this. In the faceless online world, this concept may seem as extinct as those mammoths. In fact, it is more valid than ever. Your goal is to build a quality, long-term, repeat-exposure relationship with your visitors/customers so that they will happily return to your site frequently... and monetize! Site-blogging and e-zines are two strong ways to deepen the PREselling that your high-value content has begun. You need a Backup Response, an alternative reason to visit. A good Backup Response must... • deliver a benefit to your visitor at a “no-brainer” price (free is best), and... • provide you with an ongoing opportunity to remind your customer about you and your product/service or the merchant-partners that you represent. Sooner or later, a healthy percentage of those who trigger your Backup Response will deliver your MWR -- a sale or a contract, depending on your situation. Why? Because you’re building a quality, long term, repeated exposure, one-to-one relationship with your visitor/customer.

8.1. Build Relationships With A Site-Blog Blogging is taking the world by storm. Or so it would seem if you’ve been reading anything from Newsweek to the most specialized online publications (and you should not be -- SBI! does that, so you can focus on business). 127

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A “blog” (“web log”) is, at its simplest, merely a journal of entries that one makes on a Web page. Each entry has a “permalink” to a dedicated Web page. The most recent entries are sorted to the top, meaning that Web pages are sorted chronologically rather than topically. Blogging gained popularity rapidly when “RSS” (more on this below) became a simple way to distribute these journals. It is the “perfect medium” for communicators and thinkers who have “something to say” on a frequent basis.

Here’s the bottom line on blogging. Most small business people don’t have... • the time • the inclination • the subject matter. For the full discussion, see… http://blogorbuild.sitesell.com/ While full-blogging is only right for some small businesses, blogging is recognized by more and more regular Web surfers. The mass market is subscribing to blogs. And... Since your visitors like your content, they will want more of it. It’s your pleasure to give it to them, as long as it does not require you to master a new technology and create more content than you are already doing now. With SBI!, all you have to do is click to set up a site-blog. There is no new content to create since SBI! will simply, automatically reformat your newest content into a blog!

Don’t confuse a blog with RSS. Your blog is the content. RSS is how you distribute your content. Think of it like your local newspaper. The blog is the newspaper. RSS is the paperboy. But what exactly is RSS?... RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” And that is exactly what it is... a new way for you to distribute content. That content can be any electronic communication (i.e., Web pages, mp3s, video, etc.) RSS/Blog It! converts your SBI! site into a blog. It turns your RSS feed into a perfectly formatted and visible TIER 2 Web page. Of course, that gets the 128

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attention of both your human and spider visitors! And here’s the fun part. Every time you create or modify a Web page, those changes are distributed through RSS to the world. It even automatically pings every major RSS/blog engine/directory, saving you the tedium of doing that every time you post. Visitors subscribe to your site, the way they subscribe to your e-zine! It’s the best of both worlds. Publishing a site-blog is a fantastic, non-intrusive way to maintain contact with your visitors. Your site blog lets them know “something's new.” Since they like your material, they click to re-visit your site. Bingo! Use Search It! to find breaking information that you can pass on to your visitors. Search It! > Reference Library for Content (STEP 1) > Google News (STEP 2)

Site-blogging is so easy, and such an effective way to build a following and build traffic faster, you should enable it within your first 10 pages.

8.2. Build Relationships With An E-Zine A common Backup Response on the Web is the e-zine (an e-mailed newsletter). Once you have some decent numbers, it takes only a day to get an e-zine up and running. A good e-zine tells its readers to revisit you… • to click on something missed during the first visit • to respond to an announcement you make • to see new content you’ve added The e-zine builds a relationship of trust between you and your visitors. Put yourself in the visitor’s mind. A new e-mail arrives from you. Full of excellent content that meets her needs, the e-mail prompts her either… • to click on the link back to your site to take you up on your great offer • to click on a link to one of your affiliate partners 129

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• to file in her memory that you are the person with the answers to her questions. You will use the content in your e-zine to get your MWR. It’s fine to give lots of information. But use that information to PREsell. Give your visitor a reason to click on a link back to your site or directly to one of your affiliates. The WIN-WIN provides information for your visitor and income for you.

8.2.1. Build a Sales Page For Your E-Zine How good of you to provide a free e-zine! But will your visitors subscribe?... It’s free but… you still need to sell the idea that another piece of e-mail is a good idea. After all, your visitor is going to give up her e-mail address and the time it takes to read what you send. While she’s on your site, she needs to feel that continued contact with you will be worth her while. So you will… • stress the benefits of your particular newsletter • add a clear “call to action” • finish with a subscription form Make sure the benefits are clear. Add a testimonial. Link to back issues. (Some Web masters write an issue or two no one else receives so they will have back issues. Visitors can see what they will get.) Stress that your e-zine is free. Add a professional look with a great cover like those at Killer Covers.com http://www.killercovers.com/ Then tell her exactly what to do… Subscribe! SBI! back-issues each issue of your e-zine and submits it to the Search Engines (once only). You can either include a link on your site to your back issues to show off the quality you deliver, or you can reserve back issues for your subscribers’ viewing only. It’s your call.

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8.2.2. Develop A Format Template… And Stay With It! Readers like familiarity and predictability… so develop a template, and stick with it. Make only minor, incremental changes every now and then, saving your last issue as the template for the next one. From top to bottom, here’s a quick list of things to address in your format... 1) Name your E-zine. You want your subscriber to smile in recollection when she sees it. Make the name short, memorable, descriptive, and relevant. 2) Subject, including Issue Number and Date 3) Small logo 4) First text block -- start off your e-zine with a catchy benefit-oriented slogan. For example, under your Cactus Gardening logo, you might type into your first text block... “Prickly Issues, Creative Solutions” 5) After that, experiment with a combination of text blocks, line breaks and divider lines, so that you can deliver the following “starting information”... i) Valuable PREselling Proposition -- stress the key points of your e-zine. ii) A promo pass-along -- add something like this... If you like this e-zine, please do a friend and me a big favor and “pay it forward.” If a friend DID forward this to you and if you like what you read, please subscribe by visiting...

(Then add a link to your page that promotes your opt-in newsletter.) 6) Issue number and Date (you did it in the subject, now repeat it in the body) 7) Table of Contents -- show your reader what you’re covering in this issue. Provide tantalizing “read me” headlines in your TOC. 8) From this point, experiment with… • headline blocks to start each section • dividers • line breaks 131

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9) Then the content! 10) You might want to add one more text block before the closing information (unsubscribe, etc. -- details a bit later) for your readers. This text block could include anything, for example... Comments? Ideas? Feedback? I’d love to hear from you. Just reply to this e-zine and tell me what you think!

11) Closing information. You need to give readers a chance to unsubscribe, etc. Make sure to save all this as a template for future e-zines (more on this below), so you don’t have to do it all over again. From a building block approach to setting up a template, to creating a subscription form, to automating the mailing list, to tracking statistics like open rates, SBI!’s MailOut Manager does it all. http://tools.sitesell.com/

8.2.3. Set Up Your Subscription You’ve already created a form for subscribers on your sales page. You may opt to include this form on other pages, or at the least include a link from other TIER 2 or TIER 3 pages to your sales page. Do include an e-zine button on your navigation bar so visitors can find the sales page easily. And be sure to include many references to your e-zine so your visitor has many opportunities to sign up. To prevent spamming and/or to prevent people from giving other people’s names and addresses without consent, use the “double opt-in” approach… your visitor must confirm her subscription. Although adopting a double opt-in policy means you will grow your list slightly more slowly than a marketer using the single opt-in approach, there are several reasons why it is smart to adopt such a strategy... 1) A double opt-in policy builds a truly qualified, high value list. Do not be concerned about losing a few subscribers. The confirmation step ensures that your subscribers are interested in you and your product or service.

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2) A double opt-in policy establishes your credibility with the subscriber, and emphasizes the value of your publication. 3) A double opt-in policy lowers the risk of being reported to a spam policing server by an overzealous surfer. The value of a qualified subscriber’s list? Priceless -- no credit card can buy that kind of confidence!

8.2.4. Advertise Your E-Zine List your newsletter in major e-zine directories on the Web. You’ll find these work much the same way as the main directories. Drill down through the categories and sub-categories to find the best place and submit your newsletter to the most appropriate section of the directory. Some submission tips to consider… Try some tinkering first. Do a search for your most important keywords at each directory, and note from which categories the returned results are coming. Check for keywords in the Title and the Description, as well. Remember, your subscriber is most likely to find you as a result of a keyword search. So do your best to ensure your site is listed for each particular keyword. Keep in mind that your Description is the only impression a directory visitor will get of your e-zine, so make sure you sell it! Bottom line on the e-zine directories?... It depends. If your e-zine is about a popular topic that is likely to generate many keyword searches and you’ve listed your site properly (with a compelling Description), there’s no reason why these directories shouldn’t bring a constant trickle of subscribers to your newsletter. Of course, if your newsletter is about a highly specific niche topic, your major concern will be listing in directories that receive enough traffic to generate keyword searches for that topic. It’s ideal if you can find a directory dedicated to a category that includes your theme. All in all, if you can hit the major e-zine directories in an hour or so, it’s not a bad way to spend your time. Just be sure to do your homework. Learn how to submit properly, or you’ll be wasting your time. There are free resources where everybody and everyone can list their e-zines for 133

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nothing. These include... New-List.com http://new-list.com/submit/ Newsletter Access http://www.newsletteraccess.com/ EzineAnnouncer http://www.ezineannouncer.com/ There’s a pleasant bonus when you market your newsletter. Not only will you build your e-publication, you will build more traffic to your site (if you provide a link from your subscription page to your home page). On top of that, you will also generate some all-important link popularity, which is always a good thing! An e-zine is not the only way to stay on your visitors’ radar screens…

8.3. Build Relationships With Forms Forms are an easy and safe way to communicate and interact with your visitors and customers. SPAM-bots can read e-mail addresses off your Web site so having a Contact Form in place of an e-mail link is essential. Forms usage is limited only by your imagination… • conduct a survey or poll • create a series of sequential Autoresponder messages or an e-course • collect feedback from your visitors • get leads or referrals Be on the lookout for new ideas. This SBI! site, with the help of Form Build It!

(another user-friendly module in the SBI! system), illustrates how a simple Form can be an effective communication tool. Start your research with these products… Quask http://www.quask.com/

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SmartDraw http://www.smartdraw.com/ XIGLA http://www.xigla.com/absolutefp/ Ready for the wrap-up?… DAY 8 is all about building a quality, long term, repeated exposure, one-to-one relationship with your visitor/customer. It’s about building trust, credibility and a sense of community. Once you achieve this, you become a knowledgeable friend making a recommendation. You are no longer a stranger. You have only one day to go to complete the course. Before proceeding to DAY 9, please complete your DAY 8 Goal-of-the-DAY, and take note of your Ongoing Goal... Reach out to your target audience, whenever and however you can. Make them think about your business first and not your competitors. Now it’s time to analyze your traffic base from different angles...

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9. DAY 9 Know Your Visitors Knowledge is power... Power to boost income. Goal-of-the-DAY... Familiarize yourself with a good traffic-reporting package. Convert your Theme-Based Content Site's OUTgoing links into special tracking links (no need to do this with Site Build It! -- all links OUT are automatically created as tracking links)... It has cost you time and money to generate your INCOMING traffic. Your outgoing traffic generates income for you. You can measure both… income minus expenses equals profits. If we stopped here, your site would be a black box. A “black box” is a concept used in physics. You can measure what goes into the black box, and you can measure what comes out of the black box... but you don’t know what the heck is happening inside of that black box. In other words, you don’t know why things happen. And for your long-term success, that’s critical. Why? Because if you know more about the nature of your INCOMING and OUTGOING traffic, you can maximize your returns for every dollar and minute that you spend! Yes, that is kind of important... “critical,” even. And what do you need to know? 1) Traffic 2) Links in 3) Links out. Let’s start peeking inside your “black box” by studying your traffic... Traffic, of course, is your lifeblood. You need the means to do some “blood tests” to determine your site’s health. Unfortunately, all the traffic-analysis packages out there are written by techies... for techies. They give you so much data... just because they can! But all you

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need to know is... what you need to know! You need information, not reams of useless data. The key to traffic analysis is to simplify. Forget the 150 different ways that traffic-analyzing software slices and dices hits, visits, pages, page views, and visitors. You simply don’t need to know how many left-handed Norwegians visit your site between 3-4 AM on Sundays. So let’s prune away all the useless data, and keep just the “need to know” information...

9.1. Analyze Your “Big Picture” Traffic Stats First, the big picture... All traffic-reporting software packages cover the basics... average number of visits, visitors, and pages viewed per day, as well as the totals on a per-month basis. Here’s what those terms mean... • Visits -- the number of visits to your site • Visitors -- the number of different people who visit your site (ex., a visitor could account for 10 visits) • Page Views -- the number of pages viewed by all the visitors during all the visits. A single visitor might view only one page... or twenty. Question: What about hits? Everyone talks about hits!

Short answer... forget hits. A hit is simply a line in your site’s log file. If a page has 3 graphics on it, that’s 4 hits (1 for the html page itself, plus 3 for the graphics). But if that same page has 100 graphics on it, that’s 101 hits! See why the number of hits is a useless stat? Yes, but why does everyone quote hits, then?

Two reasons... either they don’t understand the term, or they understand it and use hits because it sounds bigger! In any event, “hits” is a useless thing to measure to understand your traffic.

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By comparing your monthly “big picture” data, you should be able to see steady growth in your site’s overall traffic. If not, the “patient” needs a good dose of traffic-building medicine (luckily, that medicine is nearby... just above, actually!). Ongoing traffic-building is a good idea even if traffic is building nicely -- you can never have too much! Now that you have the big picture, it’s time to delve inside and pull out some important details... • Daily statistics -- Visits, visitors and page views must be reported on a day-by-day basis, in both absolute terms and as a percentage of the total (ex., percent of total visitors). If you do a special traffic promotion on a certain day (ex., run an ad in an e-zine), a daily statistic report is an easy way to gauge the response. • Most popular pages -- Your page view stats must be delivered on a per-page basis, with the page generating the most page views reported first. By understanding which pages are most popular, you understand better the needs of your visitors. Correlate this with your link-tracking data (more on this below) to make sure that your most popular pages “get the click” to your incomegenerating programs. Also, use this data to get a better feel for what your market wants... and, just as important, what it does not want. • Most popular entry pages -- It’s the same as the previous section, except that this specifically tells you which pages are the most popular “entry” pages. A page counts as an entry page when it starts a visit. Correlate this with how people find you (referrers and keywords, discussed just below), and you have a wealth of insight into how your site is being discovered, and what people want. Use these conclusions to give you ideas for other related, profitable areas for content development. • Most frequent exit pages -- These are the pages from which people leave your site. Some people look upon high numbers for a given page as “bad.” But you have to correlate this with other data. If a “high entry” page is also a “high exit” page, that’s not really a surprise. If a “high exit” page is also generating tons of links out to your income-generating programs for you, that’s not so bad either, is it? • Referrer URLs -- This tells you where your traffic is coming from... Search Engines, other Web sites, link exchanges, etc. Extremely useful info! • Keyword search -- Which keywords are people entering into engines to find you? That’s what this super-valuable data tells you!

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Taken together, referrer page and keyword search data tell you where and how your visitors find you, which gives you a base to build even more traffic-building ideas! As you can see, traffic analysis is actually a pretty simple task... when you know what you’re looking for, and how to turn data into information. Site Build It! provides you with exactly these traffic stats. No need to install or configure any software or to figure out what’s important. With SBI!, you have everything a good content site needs at your fingertips. And the information is presented cleanly and in an easy-to-understand manner.

Traffic analysis is the base. It tells you what you need to know about quantities of visits, visitors, and page views. It shows you where they come from (if via the Web) and what words they used to find you at the Search Engines. But you need more… Now that you understand traffic flow, you need to be able to see exactly what’s working in the two bottom-line areas that matter most... 1) how you spend your traffic-building time and money -- what’s working, and what’s not. Spend only on the techniques that bear fruit. 2) how you make your money -- gear your content more and more towards what gets the click. Because that’s what builds your income. So how do we get this information? Through two forms of analysis that are specialized for content sites like yours... • Click IN Analysis and… • Click Through Analysis Before we go further, let’s talk about two different kinds of links... 1) OFF-SITE links that bring traffic IN to you 2) ON-SITE links that send traffic OUT. OFF-SITE links do not appear on your Web site. People will not actually click upon these links while they are on your site. Rather, your potential visitors see these links off your site... in e-zine ads, or offline print ads, in flyers that you distribute at trade or hobby conventions, or in your sig file (at the end of your e-mail). And they’ll use these links to come into your site. 139

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Since you spend time and/or money on these traffic-building activities, you need a way to measure this, to track which off-site promotions are working, and which are not. Once you know which of your expense-generating activities work and which ones don’t... you know where to spend your promotional time and money! And where to stop! You build upon your successes and fix your weaknesses. Let’s contrast that with ON-SITE links... ON-SITE links appear on your site, and send visitors out of that page. These links all go to income-generating sites (merchant-partners via affiliate programs, your own online store, or your own sales site for products that you have developed). In other words, ON-SITE links generate income. So how do we track these two kinds of links?... It all boils down to this. We track how to best spend our traffic-building time and money via Click IN Analysis. We track what’s generating income by Click Through Analysis.

9.2. Explore Click IN Analysis Let’s talk about Click IN Analysis first... Click INs occur when people click on an OFF-SITE link and come into your Theme-Based Content Site. Click INs cost you time and/or money (explained above). So analyze what works (do more of it) and what fails (drop or improve it). In order to do Click IN Analysis, you create special tracking links. You create these links specifically to track the success of your OFF-site promotional campaigns. You place a different link in each of your promotional campaigns so that they are easy to track. When the user clicks on a tracking link, she first goes to a computer program that records the click, and where it came from. Then the program sends the visitor to the page in your site that you had specified. Click IN analysis yields the following... • total clicks coming in, for all your special links, and also for each special tracking link that you create 140

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• “first-time vs. repeat” click INs, for all click INs, and also on a link-by-link basis. In other words, has the person who is clicking on a link clicked on it before? You now have a way of measuring the exact traffic-building success of every offsite promotional campaign, whether you’re... • bidding for keywords on Pay-Per-Click engines • buying ads in e-zines • posting an ad on the bulletin board of your local grocery store • no matter how you promote! Here are some of the uses and advantages of Click IN Analysis... 1) The Untraceable Link -- Some links have no Referring URL, so it’s impossible to know where they come from through regular traffic analysis. But geez, we need to know this data. For example... i) links from a free e-book that you are using as a promotional tool. ii) links from e-mail of any kind... sig files, links in mailing lists, Autoresponder campaigns, links in the e-zine that you publish, ads that you buy in e-zines. iii) links from non-Web based newsgroups iv) links that are simply typed in, often due to offline exposure (especially targeted print media). Tracking links are great for any kind of offline promotion. v) links from your blog. By creating a special tracking link for each of these “untraceable links,” you’ll know what has been previously impossible to know. 2) Testing e-zine ads -- Set a different tracking URL for each ad that you write. That way you can measure which ad generates a better response. Here’s how... Run Ad #1 in E-zine #1 and Ad #2 in E-zine #2, then switch a month later. Which ad got more responses overall? Stick with what’s profitable. Drop the rest. E-zine advertising becomes very cost-effective when you can drop the dogs and increase your budget for the winners. 3) Test Web-based advertising -- Even if your promotion is Web-based, it’s more convenient to run tracking links than to review the Traffic Stats Referrer information (which do tell you which sites links originate from). So use your 141

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special tracking links to track the performance of banners, Pay-Per-Click Search Engines, and even posts to forums and discussion groups. So far, we’ve talked about tracking the various possible origins of the tracking links (i.e., the OFF-SITE places where potential visitors see and click on your tracking link... e-zines, pay-per-clicks, etc.). And we’ve assumed that the ultimate destination of those links is to your Theme-Based Content Site. But you have several options for the ultimate destination of your OFF-SITE tracking links... 1) Your Theme-Based Content Site -- Let’s say that you have a terrific page about a special kind of flower. That page has several in-context text links... links to books, growers, affiliate programs, etc, etc. You take an e-zine ad. Where should the ultimate destination be? Easy... to your Keyword-Focused Content Page! Since you have worked so many in-context text links into your OVERdelivering copy, you have a whole bunch of chances that a sale occurs on at least one of your merchant-partners’ sites. 2) Straight to a merchant-partner -- On the other hand, suppose you write a wonderful article about this special flower as content for a prominent e-zine published by a third party. Your “payment” is that you can include your URLs. Where should these links point? Easy... work those special tracker links into the content of the article, and point them straight to your merchant partners. One link for each merchant. Since anyone who clicks passes through the tracking script first, you’ll see exactly how many people clicked on each link! No point in directing them to the same info on your site, right? 3) A free trial download -- Even a download URL can be the destination. Offering a free e-book on that special kind of flower? Take an ad in an e-zine, offering the link straight to the download. Naturally, the e-book will have links to your various merchant-partners, and to your Theme-Based Content Site. Every one of those in-book links should be special tracking links, too! 4) Your online store -- Same idea. If you have an online store that needs traffic, and if the situation dictates that you’re better off by sending visitors “directly” to your store (after passing through the tracking script, of course), then do that. The same point goes if you have a site that sells single products or your services. If an ad costs you $100, but you see that it generated 500 visitors, and if you know that 2% of your visitors buy... it’s easy to figure out whether your ad is profitable! 142

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No matter where these visitors originate from, and no matter where you send them to, Click IN Analysis reports how well each promotional effort is working. Click IN Analysis is vital for anyone building income through content. Unfortunately, existing services are very expensive. Site Build It! provides all this. The Tracker Library makes it a snap to set up your special tracking links. And you get complete Click IN Analysis reports at the click of your mouse! Cost? Included in Site Build It!, which itself costs less than services that offer only this feature! http://order.sitesell.com/

9.3. Explore Click Through Analysis Click throughs occur when people click on a link on your Theme-Based Content Site and leave it. (They don’t actually leave since you pop open a new window for them!) We should actually call them “click outs” -- but since the industry is used to “click through,” we're stuck with that term! Click throughs earn you income. Why? Well, it all depends where those click throughs are going... • affiliate programs -- a percentage of those turn into sales or leads (or whatever action your merchant-partner pays for). • your own online store -- a percentage will buy, yielding you a profit. • your “order page” that sells an e-book or software that you developed. • your Net auction listing. To maximize click throughs, of course, you know that you must create highvalue content that OVERdelivers what your visitors were looking for. Blending “in-context” text links into your copy gets the click through. Once you’ve done that, of course, you need a way to know what's “getting the click”... and what’s not! And that’s where Click Through Analysis comes into play. In order to do “Click Through Analysis,” you convert your regular OUTGOING links (i.e., links to your merchant-partners, your online store, and your sales site) into special tracking links. When your visitor clicks on such a link, she first goes 143

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to a computer program that records the click and where it came from. Then the program sends the visitor to the income-building site that you had specified. Click Through Analysis yields the following... • total click throughs for all your ON-SITE links, as well as for each ON-SITE link (i.e., on a link-by-link basis) • “first-time vs. repeat” click throughs for the total of all click throughs on all your ON-SITE links and also on a link-by-link basis. In other words, has the person who is clicking on a link clicked on it before? • and, of course, the clicks divided by the page views, which gives you your “Click Through Rate” for all your links as a group, and also on a link-by-link basis. Excellent Click Through Analysis would even slice and dice your click through analysis like this... 1) It would present you with link-by-link data, broken down for every page that each link appears upon (in other words, if LINK A appears on Pages 1, 2, and 3, it shows you how LINK A performed on each of those pages) 2) And it would present you page-by-page data, broken down with the performance of every link on each page. (In other words, if Page 1 contains LINKS A, B, and C, it shows you how each of those links performed on that page.) And perfect Click Through Analysis would give you all this data for any time span that you request! Bottom line? With Click Through Analysis, you have an exact success rate of every single ONSITE link. And that, dear reader, measures income... your money. This analysis is totally integrated with Site Build It!’s site-building tools. All you have to do is click your mouse to get the reports.

You’ll know exactly what people are clicking upon and what they are not. From that point, it’s just a question of building upon your successes and fixing your weaknesses to maximize your income. Click Through Analysis is as critical for your Theme-Based Content Site as Click IN Analysis. Power-User Tip: Want perfect tracking of how effective your e-zine ad is? Combine Click IN Analysis and Click Through Analysis!

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Do this... 1) Place an ad in an e-zine, or bid on keywords from a Pay-Per-Click Search Engine. The link goes to a page on your site that receives clicks only from this ad. It can be a simple duplicate of one of your site’s preexisting pages. But it should not receive links from anywhere else, including even from your own site. 2) On that page, create new tracker links to your affiliate programs, links that are unique for this ad. You should not use these tracker links anywhere else. 3) Now your Click IN Analysis can track the INcoming traffic and your Click Through Analysis can see how many of those folks coming IN actually go to your income-generating programs (or your sales site, online store, etc.) You’ll know exactly and you will be able to say... “This e-zine ad on this day (or this Pay-Per-Click listing) brought in this many visitors of which this many clicked on to this and that merchant.” Since you know the Conversion Rate for each of your merchant-partners (or your sales site/store), you know whether it makes sense to keep advertising, or to find more targeted e-zines, or more targeted keywords on the pay-per-clicks. This technique works for e-zine ads, opt-in mailings, or article submissions that direct readers to your Theme-Based Content Site, and it can be very helpful to test the cost-effectiveness of the Pay-Per-Click Search Engines. As I said, though, this requires a fair degree of savvy and some work. Definitely for power users only. And, if it’s more appropriate to send readers directly to your merchants (instead of a page on your site), then this extra step would not be a good idea. It’s something to keep in mind.

Take-home lesson for DAY 9?... Know your visitors, the heart of your business, by following traffic stats. And tracking links in and out is the key to maximizing income by getting the most return from all your traffic-building expenses. Please complete your DAY 9 Goal-of-the-DAY, and take note of your Ongoing Goal... Create one OFF-SITE promotion with special tracking links per week (or whatever fits for you). 145

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Review traffic stats, and do both Click IN and Click Through Analysis regularly. Watch for trends. Build on your successes and either drop or improve what does not work. What’s next? It’s the moment that we have delayed gratification for, ever since DAY 4. Let’s harvest the fruits of your labor...

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10. DAY 10 Monetize! Goal-of-the-DAY… C Monetization plan.

M... It's finally “M” time! Implement your

You have a solid and growing foundation of high-quality content pages. You are value-exchanging selectively and garnering quality in-pointing links from niche directories. Targeted traffic is building. Your PREselling efforts are becoming more refined as you build your “Brand of One.” You are nurturing trust and credibility with your new (and repeat!) visitors by OVERdelivering relevant, original, high-value information (through your site, Blog It!, e-zine, etc.). People like your content... and you! Now, your site is ready to convert those ever-increasing numbers of PREsold visitors into income. How? By blending together your primary monetization model with a few others, in order to create a diverse, stable online business. In DAY 4, your focus was on “show me the money.” You needed to be sure of the monetary potential. Now it’s time to “make me the money.” There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to the question, “When do I monetize?” As a general rule of thumb, do not monetize before you... • have at least 30 pages • have at least 4 relevant, quality in-pointing links, of which two should be from directories (ex., DMOZ, Yahoo! (dir.yahoo.com), niche directories) • have started to receive a steady stream of visitors (at least 20 per day). Why wait? If you have less than 20 visitors per day, there is nothing monetize (unless you sell an expensive service and specialized products)..

Does your site meet the above guidelines. If not, keep adding content and get at least a few solid in-pointing links. Don’t worry about how much money you could be making from those “15 visitors per day.” You are not ready for M yet. Once you can say “yes” to the above 3 criteria, ask yourself three more questions. These ones are “softer” (i.e., qualitative) but they are even more important for your long-term success. 147

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1) Have I created value for my target audience? 2) Does my content/information focus on the needs of my visitors first, rather than my need to make money? 3) Does my site have a clear VPP and voice or does it sound like an encyclopedia? You are not Wikipedia. Rewrite if you answer “encyclopedia.” Write to PREsell. Do it now, before you realize you have to rewrite 100 pages! Always remember... You are a “Content Provider” first and foremost. You are not your monetization model. High-quality, relevant Content is what drives the C T P engine that delivers high volumes of PREsold visitors who love you. Once you have a solid traffic base, monetization is easy. If a page PREselling your services, or an affiliate link or an e-book (your own creation, or someone else’s effort from ClickBank’s Marketplace, for example) truly adds value to your visitors and it won’t hurt your traffic-building potential (i.e., it might keep you out of a directory if its editor objects to your site’s “commercialization”), then you might consider monetizing earlier. But... Really think it through, though. Would you add this offering even if you were not being paid for it? Does it truly help solve a problem for your visitors? Does it complement your site? Make an objective judgment -- don’t rush just to earn a few dollars right now. There is even some evidence to suggest that affiliate links on a “young site” can hurt your site’s reputation at Google. Be careful. Tread lightly. There is lots of time to blend in the M. Bottom line? Monetizing too soon will slow down your business-building process. Be patient. Determine what your most important priority is right now and whether or not Monetization is it. So... ready to monetize? Great! Go back and review your DAY 4 plans. You know much more about your Site Concept now. Different monetization models may strike you as being appropriate. 148

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No matter what your monetization strategy is, diversify to take full advantage of your PREsold traffic. Introduce at least two or three income streams, improving your chances of making every visitor to your site count. Diversification also brings stability. Never put all your eggs into one monetization basket. Add each income stream one at a time, weeks or months apart. Assess each one. Optimize it. Keep building content while you focus on building more targeted traffic for your primary monetizer. Once one model is well-established, add another. Take your time. Running too fast and adding a whole bunch of money-making schemes will get you nowhere fast. Follow your plan, steadily and surely. Monetization, if done properly, is not about adding a pile of affiliate links and a ton of Google ads all over the place. Think it through. Remember your visitorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s experience. Although you are building your business to generate revenue, monetization is a careful, deliberate, and delicate process. Keep two prime considerations in mind while monetizing... 1) Get into the mindset of your visitor. Match the unique needs of your audience to the most ideal products and solutions. 2) Avoid jeopardizing the goodwill (i.e., the PREselling) that your customerfocused content is building. You want to please most of your visitors, not all of them. You will receive a few complaints about ads or other monetization options that you offer. As long as they are few and far between, ignore them. They are signs that your balance is right. The complainers will never be customers, merely greedy, cynical freebie-hunters. Don't take them seriously or personally.

Effective monetizing is a constantly evolving process. And that brings us to your Ongoing Goalâ&#x20AC;Ś Periodically evaluate your monetization strategies to ensure that you are still in sync with the needs of your target audience. Monetization is mostly about inclination (how much are you willing to find and build new models?), motivation (even if you're willing, it can take some courage) and circumstances (some folks need the income desperately, others are happy with lesser amounts of passive income). Folks who figure out monetizing (i.e., who graduate beyond their services) are 149

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the ones who start thinking about active ways of making money, rather than just the more passive ones such as AdSense. (Of course, there is nothing wrong with the passive ones. Depending on your niche and your inclination, they can do very well for you.) On the next DAY... Wait! There is no next DAY! You are at the end of your masters course. Bring on the wrap-up!â&#x20AC;Ś

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11. The Road To Success What a long way you’ve come. Take a look! The Service Sellers Masters Course has helped you to... • understand the difference between selling and PREselling (DAY 1) • develop your best Site Concept (DAY 2) • brainstorm profitable topics (DAY 3) • plan potential monetization models for your site (DAY 4) • refine your Site Concept and registered your domain name (DAY 5) • build a site that gets “the click” (DAY 6) • generate free traffic (DAY 7) • establish credible long-term relationships with your visitors (DAY 8) • use statistics to know your visitors (DAY 9) • implement your monetization models (DAY 10) As I said back in the introduction, successful business-building on the Net is all about following the right process and smart work. Do things right the first time, step by step... and good things do happen. Remember, YOU have no brand. Amazon has a brand. Google has a brand. You must build one. And there is only one way to build your “Brand of One”… CONTENT

TRAFFIC

PRESELL

MONETIZE.

That, in a nutshell, is what builds the core for a long-term, ever-growing business with sustainable profits and true equity. Please, please do not waste your time on playing the Search Engine Optimization game. It's doomed to “keeping up” with thousands of the smartest minds on the planet at Google, Yahoo!, and Windows Live. Instead, leapfrog the SEO game players by “keeping it real.” By following the CONTENT TRAFFIC PRESELL MONETIZE process, your site will simply do better and better. And your online business will grow 151

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bigger and more profitable! The process works… http://order.sitesell.com/ Stretched for time? Let SiteSell Services build your site for you. Our SBI! Specialists deliver results. For more details, see… http://services.sitesell.com/

Let those well-heeled advertisers pay for their traffic. You have the knowledge (and with SBI!, all the tools all in one place!) to build your service selling business as big as you want. After all, it’s your road to success! Ultimately it all comes down to what one of my favorite entrepreneurs once said... “How to succeed? Try hard enough.” -- Malcolm Forbes (1919-1990)

There’s nothing else. Go get ‘em.

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Service Sellers Masters Course

Service Sellers Masters Course © 2008 SiteSell Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this publication may be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or reproduced in any way, including but not limited to digital copying and printing. The author, Ken Evoy, and the publisher, SiteSell Inc, have made their best effort to produce a high quality, informative and helpful book. But they make no representation or warranties of any kind with regard to the completeness or accuracy of the contents of the book. They accept no liability of any kind for any losses or damages caused or alleged to be caused, directly or indirectly, from using the information contained in this book. Screenshots in this book are directly from publicly accessible file archives. They are used as “fair use” under 17 U.S.C. Section 107 for news reportage purposes only, to illustrate various points that are made in the book. Text and images available over the Internet may be subject to copyright and other intellectual rights owned by third parties. Some images copyright www.arttoday.com. SiteSell Inc. Montreal, Quebec Canada H3G1S0

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